


Sunrise on the Beach

by QuillHeart



Category: Lupin III
Genre: Angst and Almost Hurt/Comfort, Consensual But Not Safe Or Sane, Dark, Depression, Drug Use, Heist Story, I'm Very Proud To Be Using It, Intervention, Jigen is a Good Friend, Lupin Can't Be Left Alone Or Else His Life Spirals Out of Control, M/M, Mentions of rough sex, Or Does It...?, Self-Destruction, Tragedy, Zenigata is a Good Dad, cross dressing, red jacket, wow what a tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-11
Updated: 2017-09-29
Packaged: 2018-12-26 16:23:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12062691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuillHeart/pseuds/QuillHeart
Summary: It was 1984.  Smack in the middle of a decade that was marked by drug wars, bad ideas, and a little thing that would become known as the AIDS Epidemic.  When Lupin hasn't been heard from in a year and suddenly invites Jigen to a sex resort in the Caribbean, neither man expects anything good to come from it, but both desperately hold out hope in what goes unsaid between them.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, I watched the movie Goodfellas for the first time, looked up a bunch of stuff about the musical influence of Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" because I was looking for a bunch of '70s music to write Lupin stuff to, and then this fic happened. 0_o 
> 
> (It's a good song though, do take a listen.)
> 
> Sorry in advance for the lack of explicit sex scenes. And the period sexism. I hope you can enjoy this sordid angst fest anyway!
> 
> Don't do hard drugs, kids. It's just not worth it, in case you happen to be one of the 98% of people that can't handle it.  
>    
>  ~~Maybe this would technically be in the space between Red and Pink Jacket but whatever~~

 [Lupin]

 

A year.

I hadn’t seen them in nearly a year.  Any of them.

The last time I’d spent so much time without my inner circle, it’d been because we’d made so much and the scene had been so hot that there’d been no benefit to meeting that out-weighed the risks.  And besides—we didn’t need to.  We were filthy rich.  A way we probably wouldn’t stay for long, but just as it was to each his own to play a part in the crime, it was to each his own to spend his winnings.

That didn’t mean I didn’t miss them, though.  I could almost see their faces next to the reflection of mine as I swirled the wine in my oversized glass.

Last time, we’d eventually come back together through fate and revenge, yet stuck around afterward through honest friendship. We’d had a great many adventures together, adventures that made me feel truly alive and glad to be so.  Life was often so beautiful, when I was with them.  In ways that only they could make me see.

But that felt quite far away, now.  And I was tired of waiting just _to feel_.  Even the glint of stolen diamonds in my hand had lost its all-powerful shimmer some time ago. 

I sighed and set my chin in my hand, lining up the bowl of red along the setting sun’s path.

That last time, too, I had been staring out at the sea while waiting for them.  Sitting at a table on an ill-fated cruise ship that had been engineered as our coffin, just watching the world go by with a drink in my hand and a breeze in my hair.

And this time…

I gazed out beyond the pool, staring at the beach and the horizon that made up the resort’s edge.  The sun was well on its way down, the tinges of red in heaven and ocean alike overtaking the once-vibrant Caribbean blue. 

I closed my eyes, dreaming of Jigen’s hands running through my hair.  Feeling the comfort of his steady sniper’s warmth on my bare shoulder, and the sweet, kind reassurance of his lips on mine.

I could almost hear his voice…

Until the scrape of concrete on leather interrupted my thoughts, right next to my head. 

I looked up lazily, half expecting Zenigata’s grinning face out of sheer Pavlovian conditioning. 

But it wasn’t.  It was only my mark, an older politician from a former European colony with sandy shores who very much liked to tower over people of a lesser weight class while his dick was hanging out.  This time though, he had a fruity drink in his hand as he did so.

I was in the nudist pool of a swingers’ resort, so that wasn’t odd in and of itself—nor was the smile on his face.  Nor the fact that I was completely naked, too.

“Can I offer you a new drink?” he asked, holding something big and tropical down to me. 

My drink was almost empty.  With effort, I smiled for him, making sure I shrugged with as much effeminate charm as I could manage as I came away from the wall.  “Sure.”

“So tell me your story,” he said, sitting on the poolside and dipping his legs in.  I gazed over his crotch with coy eyes, then took the drink and sipped at it, eyes big and innocent as I looked up at him.

I was well over thirty now, but damned if my good genes didn’t make me look fifteen years younger without my sideburns.  I still go carded sometimes in certain countries, when I’d stand next to Jigen and act a little ditsy.

Life sure was strange, wasn’t it?  Strange and wonderful, in a place growing darker by the minute in more ways than one.

“I’m just here for vacation with my ‘professor,’” I explained, taking a sip of the drink after taking another moment to look at the sun just as it disappeared below the horizon.  A green flash went off; I smiled, savoring the moment.  It was a lucky sign.  A lover’s sign.

“Your…professor?” he asked above my head, half surprised and half titillated.

I took a moment to drag myself away from the sunset, then winked, making sure he knew it was the latter feeling he was to follow.

“He’s not here yet,” I clarified, “so I have a day or two to play.  He’s at a conference currently, out in town.  I’m just a lowly grad student, but I’m the teacher’s pet, if you know what I mean.”

Here, the man, whose eyes lit up a little at the mention of the word “he” and a lot more at the word “pet,” took the bait with enthralling force: “I had thought you were alone,” he admitted, with thin but slick tones of kindness.  “Shame.  If I’d known there was a time limit, I would have approached you sooner.”

“You’ve been watching me?” I quipped.

“Ah, well…no, I’ve just seen you around, is all, and you seem interesting…”

I smirked wickedly as he fumbled, setting the drink on the edge of the pool with a shrug.  When I had his full attention, I made a show of sucking down a gulp of the drink without my hands involved, looking at him all the while.

“Well, it’s good you _came now_ ,” I whispered, never taking my eyes off him.  “Because I was having a bit of a dry spell, what with all this.”

Once he blinked hard and swallowed tightly, eyebrows unconsciously raising high enough that I genuinely smirked, I turned my head behind me, to follow where my hand was pointing.

We were at a private sex resort’s nudist pool, yes.  But while the word “clothing optional beach” was an absolutely neutral term in much of my home continent, here it was a kinky exhibitionist’s paradise…which meant that I couldn’t get away from the displays of PDA.

And, true to form, there were three couples behind me, each making out like the world didn’t exist.  And there was no one else in the pool but me.  Damned off season.

The resort itself prioritized couples with pricing and events—I guess because helping established couples indulge their kinks with random strangers was a better image than helping random singles do the same thing—and probably also for insurance purposes, if I was honest.  It was the ‘80s.  Suing was huge business these days.

And that strange disease that was making its way around the world, whose name and path of contagion was changing every six months…that had shuttered a lot of doors overnight, once news of it officially went public.  No one knew how it spread, but it was suspected with some certainty at this point that it was sexually transmitted.  This was one of the few places like this still left, and only because it was so upscale that most of its patrons could afford certifiably clean bedfellows.

But still.  As a single man, it was less of a hunting ground and more of a “waiting for someone to think I was easy pickings” situation.  Which was a part I could certainly play, but not what I was about in this day and age.

And then there was the fact _of_ the day and age.  Somewhere along the line, young single men had gone from sexy, virile catches that women fell over themselves to attract the attention of, to public enemy number one.

Women, too, were by and large less interested in exploring the world of men and more interested in owning it at all costs.  Everyone was angry and frustrated and everyone, absolutely everyone, was doing some kind of hard drug on a daily basis.  It was a damn mess of a decade, one in which people like me barely had room to breathe.

Oh, for the days when I could just go to a club, set down a grand on any ridiculous number of bottles, and then go home with three willing women or more.  Then wake up in the morning with everyone professing a good time, lazily enjoy the view as the girls got dressed in a twitter, and take a second round with whomever didn’t have to go to work that day.

Oh, for those days…. I really missed the hippies. 

The old mark’s eyes lingered on that display of public mating a little longer than was necessary, then looked back down at me.  I grinned at him, feigning harmlessness and oozing with fake Miami sugar baby refinement.  “Why didn’t you take me to dinner?” I prompted.  “Then we can talk about what you’re looking forward to tonight, and see if it matches up with what I’m interested in giving.”

I pulled myself out of the pool with both arms, the water streaming off me in the red sun and amber string lights in a way I was pretty sure Fujiko referred to as “the glisten like the diamonds you want to steal” move.

The older gentleman stared appreciatively while I struck a pose, just like she would do, as I wrapped a clean towel around my waist.  (Since we were going to the common areas, it’d be necessary.)  My abs were in as fine a shape as they had ever been—strong enough to use as a cutting board—and it was surely the kind of thing he was thinking of doing a line of blow off of, given the look in his eye.

Or two or three.

So I just smiled and gazed knowingly into his eyes as his blue ones trailed up to mine.

“Sounds like a plan,” he agreed.  “What would you like?  Fish?  Steak?  Buffet?”

“Hah,” I laughed, then eyed him with a glittering smirk.  “…‘You’?”

He sputtered but then rubbed a hand over his mouth.  The poor British bastard.  I shrugged with a mousey gaze at the sky.  “Steak’s fine.  The grille, then?” I asked.  “Meet you there in twenty for proper attire?”

“Only twenty?” he asked.  The resort was pretty big.

“I decide what I like quickly.”  I beamed.  “Oh, the joys of men.”

He smirked at that, eyes drifting off as he nodded to pleasant thoughts of something unseen.  “Indeed.” 

Slowly, that gear-turning predator’s gaze came back to me, settling idly on my feet.  I wiggled my toes playfully, and when he looked up at my face, we both smiled honestly. 

And when he put his hand on my shoulder to guide me indoors, I didn’t mind.

As much as I had reason to deplore the people I chose as my marks, I honestly enjoyed conning them.  The joy of pulling one over on the world’s evil elite or utterly destroying their carefully crafted empires was one thing, but it felt like living, when I got their inner selves to shine through.  It’d be just a moment in the middle of the crime, but sometimes, it really felt like…connection, this quiet space that existed between the games we all played in our daily lives.

Sometimes, they were moments that would make me have to change my whole plan, because I’d discover something unexpected about them as people.  That, more than the jewels, more than the payout, was what I lived for.

Except for seeing Jigen’s happy face, when I told him I was about to deposit tens of thousands of dollars in his bank account.

That hand rubbed my shoulder protectively as the air conditioning hit.  I thanked him curtly, for just a moment forgetting that it wasn’t Jigen’s hand there.

_Really though…all I’m doing is pulling the feathers off these birds with clipped wings, aren’t I?_

Opening my hands and peaking in for a moment.  That’s all it was.  Nothing more.  I just had to make sure they didn’t bite me.

 

“So I hear the French know a thing or two about how to have fun,” he said, taking a sip of his wine.  We were sitting at the bar, side by side; I’d thickened my accent just for fun.

I’d had to draw him away from a stupid place to sit, too, one that left our backs open.  Politician he may have been, but clearly not one afraid of being assassinated.  I’d had to finagle a seat where I could see the door, what with Jigen absent, and find a reason to explain it away.  That’d been the hardest part of the night so far.

It was laughably easy.  As much as I adored Jigen and his many gifts, God, I loved the easy marks sometimes.  It was so fun to take them down a peg by robbing them blind, the payoffs were pretty good, and yet it was just so much less _stress_ to just pull off a job all on my own.

“Oh, it’s not so much that we all do, it’s just that we aren’t afraid of our bodies like you poor Commonwealth folks, so we learn what’s good a lot faster”—here, I leaned in at a whisper, toying with the edge of his glass with a finger—“and aren’t afraid to share it.”

He chuckled as my fingers walked up his arm and rested his chin in his hand.  His leg moved over to mine.  “I’d like that.”

I let the moment linger, felt the electric tingle zip up my nerves and into my extremities, then slid my hand, under the bar, over to that thigh that touched mine.  “And how about you?  What do you know?”

“Well,” he admitted with some seriousness, “I like to think my years have added up to something.”

We exchanged glances.  I smiled and took a drink—and rubbed his leg with mine.  There was a decent amount of muscle there.

“What sort of things do you like?” I asked once I’d put my drink down with a heady gasp to savor the burn of alcohol—and show him what that voice of mine sounded like in such a moment.  “Since you’re here, I assume it’s something.”

“Mmm.”  It was his turn to play coy.  He licked his hips, eyes going up and down my frame.  But rather than say anything, he turned away, hiding in his drink.  “I’m afraid it’s not polite.”

“I’m flattered you think I’m the polite type, but please, don’t hold back for my sake.  Actually, I’ve heard that the most adventurous Brits get is heels, mirrors, and the occasional grassy field.  You’ll have to do better than that to impress me.”  I leaned back in the stool, drumming my fingers on the table.  Fingers people often told me were downright irresistible for one reason or another.

I was wearing a blue T-shirt that brightened my eyes and dark slacks—truly, nothing shocking.  But it was seventy degrees even at night here.  The only reason I was wearing trousers at all was the A/C.

He was wearing a white button-up and shorts.  I was mildly disappointed by that, but boy, when Commonwealth men found themselves at a place and rank where they were allowed to wear shorts, man they’d pick it every time no matter the fashion faux pas it created.

That was part of the reason the Parisians ridiculed them so thoroughly (and the metropolitan Italians, let’s be honest).  The Spanish just shook their heads at it.

“Well,” my mark began, looking around. I leaned in to chase him, honestly—and terribly—curious. Leaning in as well, he muttered, “have you ever considered dressing up like a girl?”

I blinked at him, nonplussed, then a grin scrawled across my face.  “You mean me, or you, good sir?”

“You,” he said, flicking his hand at me in embarrassment and going for his napkin to busy himself.  “You’re the cute one.”

“Oh, well!  Either’s okay,” I laughed.  “You know, you’d look great in a red feather boa and heels.”

“Oh boy,” he said, holding up a hand.  “You’re trouble.”

“Hah!  You don’t know the half of it.”

“…What?”

We were both staring down our drinks when he suddenly stopped and turned to me, the air turning from jovial to razor-sharp cold—at least on his end.  I blinked at the end of the goblet in my hand, the light distorted in the swirl of the glass’s stem.

And then I turned to him and said, with a completely straight face, “I look great in a set of red three-inch heels.”  I bit my bottom lip to hold down the grin and shook my head as I went back to my drink.  “I brought a whole outfit for Sunday night, if I’m honest.”

“Oh really now?”

I couldn’t hold down the exited, mildly embarrassed grin.  It was taking over my whole face and making me look like an idiot, I knew.  But I hoped the very real sparkle in my eyes made up for it; most people worth anything seemed to think it did.  “Mm hmmmmmmm.”

Now, it was finally his turn to lean forward on his arm and chase me across the bar.  “Any chance you could wear that for me?  Or is it just for your Professor?”

Internally, I was seeing nothing but dollar signs and hearing pleasant moans between my ears.  Externally, my eyes were shining and I rubbed my hand over my mouth.  “Wellll, I could probably make it happen.  Would you be willing to roleplay with me?”

“Would I?  Darling, I’d demand it.”

I giggled and, as he picked up his near-empty drink, I held my glass up to his in the low light of the bar.  “It’s a deal, then.”

The glasses clinked together.  I slugged the rest of mine down.

“And…this associate of yours, he really doesn’t mind sharing while he’s away?”

I shook my head.  “What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

“That’s not entirely reassuring,” the man said, this time with a tinge of honest political wit about him.  I took a second to feel it out, hand playing at the base of the glass stem as I looked away.

“I mean, I’m his favorite now, but I won’t always be.  Once I graduate, then what?”  I turned back to him, smiling gently but firmly with my chin in my hand and shoulders loose.  “So he gets what he pays for.”

“And what,” the man said, suddenly business-like, “is the price I’m going to have to pay for you?”

A chill zipped through me from the tone of his voice, and in the momentary spike of adrenaline that followed, I took the opportunity to pull on my poker face—which was really just going from visibly startled to visibly confused.  “What do you mean?”

“How much do you charge?”

My eyes widened.  Then I sat up, waving my hand.  The nervous, harried chuckle that bubbled up out of me wasn’t entirely dishonest; the alcohol was doing its job, and I’d had about four drinks in the last hour and a half.  “No, no, you’ve got the wrong idea.”

“Do I?”

I nodded emphatically.

He gazed at me for a long while, but then smirked, his hand coming down to hold mine.  “You sell yourself short.”

_Oh…right…I’m a broke college student sugar baby.  Of course he’d think I’d demand a price.  Well…_

“Well,” I said, leaning forward where his now-empty plate had once been, “If you make me feel good, that’s what I want.  I’d…” I licked my lips, sliding my leg further up against his than it’d ever been.  “Lately…all I want is the taste of a good dom.”

The air, once cold, turned hot and stayed there.  My mark was silent for a bit as he looked at my leg, then my eyes. He took a heady breath through his nose before chuckling softly; before I could pull away, his hand slid up between my legs and he kissed me.  Softly, slowly—on the cheek, where the other patrons wouldn’t be able to see.

My heart sped up, a little bit.  When he pulled away, my eyes darted back and forth, searching his.

But he just smiled.  “That can be arranged.  At least for tonight.”

I blushed.  Honestly blushed, to the tingling of my cheek.

The mark patted my knee.  “C’mon.  Finish that and let’s get going.”

“Oh?  Oh…okay, yeah….”

I hadn’t planned on it going this far yet.  Maybe I wouldn’t need Jigen at all, after this.

His hand was on my shoulder now.  A little prickle of warning went up in me after at that—he was suddenly being a lot more possessive, a lot more self-assured.  Which…I had heard about beforehand; I just wasn’t prepared given the drink I’d just chugged on the end of the last.  Though, while the idea of ending up in his room without backup wasn’t ideal, I figured I could handle it.

And honestly?  I was a little excited by the warmth in that hand.  It’d been a while.  Mark or not, it was nice to find someone that wasn’t _afraid_.

So I shoved my hands in my dizzied pockets and followed the guy.

We walked over to the VIP section of the hotel, which would include the world’s ultra-elite, knowing this place’s selectivity.  People who were often entirely untouched by the law.

Still though, when I stepped into his suite and found not one but two women and piles of white scattered around the room, I stopped in my tracks and just stared, speechless.  The air was honestly hazy with cocaine.

“You’re not afraid of a little dust, are you, angel?” he asked to that look.

“Oh…uh?” A strained smile twitched at one side of my mouth.  “This is…more than a little.”

“Don’t worry about it, it’s fun and I’ve got political immunity.”  He smirked and the hand that had been on my waist this whole trip rose, settling on the base of my neck in a firm grip.  “You don’t mind the women, do you?  They’ve been here since last night.”

 _That_ was when the smirk on my lips grew into an honest one.  I looked him up and down, then stared into his eyes, hard and glittering.  “Are the snow bunnies dessert, or the main course?”

“Why don’t you get on your knees and find out?” he asked back, eyes narrowing with a purr.  His hand slid up into my hair, and when he pushed me down, I went with a willing smile.

It was not to last long.

 

* * *

 

It was 1984.  Smack in the middle of a decade that I was pretty sure every adult was going to want to utterly obliterate from their memory banks.

Hair spray.  Shoulder pads.  Genderqueer rock stars and IBM computers revolutionizing everything into the future whether we liked it or not.  Militant women that hated men almost as much as they tried to be them, and men who’d lost all sense of purpose and kept careening off metaphorical cliffs.  Endless genocides in the collapse of WWII’s colonialism, and utterly ridiculous corruption in anything that could make you money.  Latch key kids the rates of which hadn’t been seen since the 16-hour factory days, and through it all, the fuel of the rich and famous: cocaine.

I stared at the shower drain between my feet, feeling the grains wash down my body along with the water and trying not to let any of it into my orifices.  Somehow, I’d finally gotten the man to stop putting it in me, but there’s been so much of it in the air and on me that I was pretty sure I was still tripping just a little bit as I stared at that white porcelain floor. 

Hell, I was lucky I hadn’t OD’d on that stuff.  How long had I even been staring at this drain?  How long had I been fucking him and those girls?

I shook my head and threw the warm all the way off.  Scrubbed my hands through my hair as the rush of clarity and the hiss of pain came.

I closed my eyes for a bit, getting my heart to slow and mind to settle.  I still felt hot, no matter what I did.

So when I opened my eyes again, I focused on the bruises.

 

* * *

 

Eventually, my mark had come down off his high and collapsed, though it really, really had not been soon enough.  No wonder Fujiko never actually slept with her marks if she could help it. 

In the wane light of predawn, numb and disoriented, I’d sat for a long while next to him, just thinking everything and nothing while the cocaine rush of confidence and euphoria drained out of me, leaving crippling self-doubt and anxiety in its wake. 

Then, when he and the women were finally all out and the sunrise had turned orange, I’d gone over to the safe.

It was so automatic to me at this point.  Even totally rattled, I’d just sat in front of it and listened.  Turned the dial until my breathing slowed and my peace was found.

72-12-4-51-33.  That was the combination of the safe.  And in it—

More bags of white powder.  So goddamned _many_ of them.   A particularly nice ruby necklace.  And a wallet with a certain key card.

That was what I was after.  Grab it and make a copy: I could have done it this morning—he was probably going to be out long enough—but there were many unknowns, and I didn’t have the equipment on me at the time.

And at the moment, here in my room, I really didn’t want to go back.  I just wanted to sit under the water and stare into space, trying not to feel his drug fueled hands on my throat.

So that’s what I did—until I fell asleep there.

_Oh, how disappointed Pops would be, if he could see me now._


	2. Chapter 2

[Jigen]

 

 It had been a year.  Almost a year to the day since I’d last seen Lupin.

To be honest, we’d spent plenty of time apart in our lives, but few were this long, especially since our relationship had matured.  But even more than that loneliness his absence left, what worried me was the radio silence.

One of the very few things Lupin insisted upon in managing heists was punctual communication; the lack of it was one of the few ways we knew, when on the job, when to come running.

True, he also occasionally had a “under no circumstances interfere with my plan, even if it defies all logic” mandates for his own personal vendettas, but there’d been no indication of that this time.  He’d just fallen off the earth and I’d grown incredibly worried that he was either dead or in trouble, since even when I reached out, the replies, if they came, were miniscule.

So when Lupin had contacted me about a job he needed help with, I’d been both relieved and excited to see my best friend again.

I’d gotten off the plane in the early afternoon, and by the time I’d checked into the hotel, it was nearly twilight.  Knowing him, he was probably out running around somewhere chasing skirts (namely, in the hot tub), so I was already planning my next move when I opened the door to the suite.

What I did not expect to see was my baggage by the hall closet and a woman lying ragdoll on the bed, top stripped down to her bra and head turned away from me like she was dead.

It honestly looked like a crime scene, and for a moment, I couldn’t breathe.  My eyes searched around for blood and any other evidence of the crime as I stood there, hand hovering above my revolver’s grip.

But I found none; so my first thought after that was that this was the wrong room, but no—my key _had_ opened the door.  The next was that it was a trap. Though maybe…I’d simply walked into something of Lupin’s doing.  A misguided present for me, or a woman he was in the process of liberating, perhaps?

But as I crept forward a cautious step… I realized that I knew those skinny legs.  And even though the floor squeaked terribly under foot, she still didn’t move.

I set the bouquet in my left hand down on the suitcase and, carefully advancing with magnum drawn, I eventually found the room empty of anyone else.

Hair and skirt and blasted, glassy look at the wall aside, I recognized those legs, those shoulders.  Those _hands,_ laying vapid with fingers curled up toward the sky.

“Lu…pin?” I asked, but he just kept staring at nothing, like he’d fallen into a coma with his eyes open, in the middle of getting dressed—or maybe undressed.  But at least he was visibly breathing, if slowly.

That was when I realized, with a crushing weight on my chest, that my instincts heretofore had been right.

 _You idiot, you’re supposed to call me_ before _things get this bad!_

“What…are you doing?” I added stiffly, hoping he was still here enough to respond—whatever that meant.  I honestly didn’t want to have to find out.

He was staring out the open balcony doors, onto the sea and its blood-red sunset.  There were no lights on in the room, so the sun painted him with its light instead.

“I’m visualizing,” he said softly, so suddenly that I startled.  “The performance for tomorrow.”

I took a couple breaths and for a second just focused my attention on my hand against the magnum’s metal, deciding where I wanted to go with this.

In the end, I decided to sheath the gun and sit down next to him.  With a sigh, I ran a gentle, affectionate hand along the inside of his stocking-clad thigh to greet him. 

He tensed a little where I touched him, but did nothing more.  He didn’t look at me; he didn’t breathe any harder.  Just… _tensed_.

That was odd.  That…was _not right_ , actually.

“Are you…okay?” I asked, settling my hand reassuringly on his plaid-covered hip.

Admittedly, this was not the reaction to my arrival I’d expected—or hoped for.  Enough so that I was worried rather than angry.  But he also wasn’t yelling, “Jigen, watch out for ___!”, so I wasn’t quite sure what needed to be done.  Apparently no one had run out the balcony door after trying to kill him like I’d initially thought, nor was he immediately expecting any danger.

Still, everything about Lupin was eerily subdued, from his voice to his posture.  Even the sound of the ocean and the palm trees through the screen door seemed moody, suppressed, under the weight of that fiery evening sky.

“I’m not sure,” he admitted softly under that coating of red and purple hues.  He took a long, anemic breath, then sighed it out.  He sounded lost, and he still wouldn’t look at me.

“…Are you injured?”

“Take a look.”

Leaving my hand lightly on his stomach, I leaned over and turned on the bedside lamp.  But it wasn’t until I was leaning directly over him that I saw them all.

Bruises, dark ones.  All over his body from wrist to thigh to throat.  I could see the outline of fingers on both his thigh and his neck, and that was just this side of him, from this angle.

“…I’ll kill them.”  It wasn’t even a question.  Anger flared, hot and instantaneous, possessive and protective and supported by the year of anxiety I’d had building up to this point.  I nearly went for my gun.

But before I could make good on that urge, Lupin suddenly flicked his gaze over to me.  It was the most I’d seem him move since I’d gotten here, even though his head hadn’t actually moved.  But still, combined with the look in his eyes, it stopped me cold.  His dreamy gaze had suddenly been replaced by sharp, heavy clarity, boring into my head. 

It was “the boss’s warning” eyes.

But I wasn’t about to accept them.  One hand of mine fisted at my side, the other on the cool, bruised skin of his stomach.  “Who did this to you.”

He held my gaze a little longer, then said, “The mark.”

It was a frank statement, meant to stop me as much as challenge me.

“…Is our cover blown?” I asked icily, after a moment of thought.

“No.”  Lupin turned away, looking back out at the last vestiges of the sunset.  “I simply underestimated the extent of his drug habit.”

A chill went down my spine, as I watched his weary eyes gaze into the distance.  “Are you…high right now?”

I honestly couldn’t decide if I was going to walk out the front door or throttle him myself if the answer was “yes.” 

Lupin took a deep breath, closed his eyes, then sighed out whatever tension was in his mind.  “No.”  He scrubbed a hand over his wig and then sat up.  He was visibly dizzy; I stopped his weight at the shoulder with a hand, and he didn’t bat me away.  In fact, he just sat there for a second, breathing like he was unable to focus on reality.

I looked him over since I had the chance, checking for undue weight loss and any new scars.  But he didn’t seem any worse off than normal; even under the bruising, his abs were far more pronounced than his ribs, which was an honest relief.  The handprints on his hips, the scratches on his back, and the bite marks on his neck, however, weren’t.

Lupin clearly wasn’t on an even keel, though; that much was obvious.  He shook his head and rubbed his forehead, sounding groggy.  “Just didn’t get much sleep last night,” he muttered. 

I heaved an exhausted sigh and grimaced, finally getting it.  “How much did you do?”

Lupin sighed too.  He was staring at himself in the vanity mirror, which sat beyond the foot of the bed, his shoulders hunched and hands in his lap like he’d lost the use of them.  “Couple lines, couple hours apart.  Faked a few more.  Who knows how much I got from kissing him, though.  And the air. God, the _air_ ….”  He ran a hand over his face, blinking hard.

I sighed too and combed my free hand through my hair, even though my right still held him across the chest.  “Was it necessary?” I whispered, drawing him in and setting my chin on his shoulder.

“Not entirely.”

I hissed, wincing.  “Lupin…”

“I’m not gonna apologize for it, Jigen.  But I’ll admit…it wasn’t my best move.”

I just frowned and rubbed my forehead, the images of dead friends going through it.  “I don’t need this, you know.”

“Jigen, I need to tell you—”

“What?”

He’d trailed off and never finished.  But when I lifted my head and turned to him, he was holding his hand over his forehead like he’d just had an epiphany.

“What?” I repeated suspiciously.

“Nevermind,” Lupin decided.  He looked back at me—with more fervor, and more guilt, than he’d had so far.  “I’m not making a habit of it, don’t worry,” he said, suddenly forcing a smile.

I eyed him, not buying it.  Something was up, probably something about the heist, and that never ended well for me and the number of years I had left in my life.  “I do worry, that’s my job.”  I turned until I was sitting parallel with him, crossing one leg and drawing it near.  “To worry and to be here for you.”

I wrapped an arm around his shoulder and rubbed it; he took a steadying breath and nodded.

“So what are all the bruises about?” I hedged in the moment of candor, hoping it’d be enough.

“He…”  Lupin’s eyes lost their light, and he rubbed a hand over his mouth.  “Liked meth too.”

My eyes widened, and my hand lifted from him in shock.  “Tell me you didn’t…”

Lupin shook his head serenely, and directed my hands back on his body—recapturing them with a gentle touch, his hands swirling on his wrists not unlike an elephant with its trunk as it reconnected with long lost friends.  “Don’t worry.  I’d never do that one.  It doesn’t sound fun.”

Well…that was something for my poor heart, at least.

“So…this state you’re in,” I hedged, head tilting down to nuzzle his temple.  “Is it the come-down?”

He smiled softly and, since it was now disheveled anyway, set aside my hat. His hand came up and petted my hair, which was hanging loose at the moment, in a friendly greeting.  “Not entirely.”

Even as I held him, my heart was racing, full of the fears that had crept into it and taken root in the last several months.  It was good to see him alive, but now that I was here, I was acutely aware of how much work there was to do—and how much I didn’t need all this worry, really and truly.  Still, it seemed like I was desperately needed here, for a reason I was determined to figure out.

But Lupin, damn it all, was the lock picker, not me.

So I simply put my arms around my partner and held him.

“Are we safe?” I asked into his hair, after the sound of the sea had had many beats to go by, as did my heart, thrumming against my chest.  He smelled fragrant; his normal scent masked underneath soap and women’s perfume.

“Yes?” Lupin touched my arm, then laid his lips against it.  I could feel him sag into me.

“Then stay with me for a while.”

“Okay?”

I leaned back, taking him with me onto the bedspread.  I snugged his side up against my front, and soon, he turned and pulled himself against my chest, head bowed and eyes closed.

 “I missed you,” I whispered into his body.

 He didn’t say a single word.  He didn’t have to, though; his heavy sigh said it all.

 

* * *

 

When I woke up, it was dark outside.  The table lamp was still on, and a lukewarm breeze swept into the space from the screen door.  I realized with a start that I’d left us both totally open to ambush—and that Lupin was no longer nestled in my arms.

I took a moment to look around the soft yellow light of the room without moving, then rolled over.  I found Lupin in profile, standing in the hallway by my luggage, holding the bouquet of flowers studiously.

Apparently he’d shut the doors to the balcony too at some point, but had opened the screen windows in their top halves.

I turned on to my side and watched my partner of so many years for a little bit, the breeze cool on my neck and the sound of the waves gentle.  He had his head bowed; his middle fingertip gently caressed a daisy, like all his thoughts lay scattered on the petals and he was assessing them one by one as he touched them.

“You brought me flowers?” he asked, looking back at me with a small but endearing smile.

I propped myself up on an elbow, dragging a pillow over to do it.  “Yeah… Been going to so many funerals lately, just wanted a happy reason to give flowers to someone again.”

“You too…huh?”

I didn’t need to see the smile erase from his face like so many drawings in the sand to understand what he was talking about.  But still, when I saw the loss write across his features, it hit me like a punch.

Lupin turned to me with the bouquet held close, a sad smile on his face.

“I’m happy to be that reason, then.”

His smile grew a little brighter.  I reached out an arm to him, smiling back a little too.  He looked good with the mix of warm hues, and to see him hold it, when I’d all but worried he was dead these last few months….  I suddenly just wanted to hold him, and never let him go.

Lupin, luckily for me, was feeling magnanimous, because he came over at my beckoning.  I sat up, clothes crumpled and hair a-tangle, while he came to the edge of the bed.  He took a place between my legs; standing there, he took a last sniff of the flowers, and then set them on the bedside table.

For my part, I reached out to hold his hips and draw him nearer by the belt loops.  “Gotta admit, I wasn’t expecting a sex club to be our first place of meeting after a year…but maybe I should have?  Where have you been, anyway?  Just busy?”

My hands molded around the back of Lupin’s slender hips, interlocking at the back of his waist in a familiar handhold.  He smiled a bit, swaying into my touch, but when I looked up, he looked away.

“Just grieving.”

I watched the emotions play across his face, wondering how worried I had to be about this.  “Grieving what?”

“This decade.”  Lupin huffed, a little bit of a growl.  His hand came down on my shoulder, automatically gripping it in annoyance, while his lips pursed and he bitterly eyed the wall.

“Oh…yeah.  The ‘fall of the mob’ stuff?”

“All of it,” Lupin sighed, sliding down into my lap.  He wrapped his hands around my lapels, nuzzling his cheek into my neck, and then, as he got his legs onto the bed and his hips situated with my help, simply drew his arms around my neck and set his chin on my shoulder.  In return, I held him up, held him close.  Kept him warm against the ocean breeze.

“Whether it’s the drugs or the cops or the specter in the community…I’m losing at least a person a month to shit that shouldn’t be happening.  It’s…” he looked up longingly and then heaved a sigh, his whole body deflating.  “…Tough.”

Lupin was not the most sentimental person when it came to the other people in our line of work.  Lovers and flowers and artistic movements, sure, but even with simple friendships, he tended to have trouble attaching to properly.  But when losses stacked up, I think it affected him pretty hard, because he was forced to realize all the paths he’d never taken, all the people he’d never fully known, because he kept them at arm’s length.  And that path not taken, those closed doors, tended to cripple him if they stacked up.

“Yeah,” I whispered reassuringly, running a hand up and down his sides heavily, repeatedly, to keep him grounded.  “I was afraid something had gotten you too, honestly.  You haven’t called me up in forever, even to talk….”

Lupin shrugged, eyes hollow as he stared into the flowers.  He reached out to the bedside table and touched at a daisy petal again, delicately, his mind clearly off in space as it bobbed.

Then he turned to me, looked my head over, and flicked at the dangling strands of hair by my chin with the same finger.  It bobbed, and even though I frowned at him quizzically, he smiled a bit, lost in his own thoughts. 

_I’m one of your mnemonic flowers, huh?_

Seeing him cheerful enough to be playful was important, especially at a time like this, so I caught his hand and kissed it before threading my fingers together behind his back again and returning to holding him up.

“I don’t know what it is,” Lupin quietly admitted from his perch my lap, still looking down at the flowers, “but nothing excites me lately.  Calls to me.  It’s almost like…my milieu has evaporated.”

“Thievery not fun anymore?”

“Kinda.  The computer systems are an interesting thing to learn…there’s always something new going on there, and it’s fun to send it haywire.  But the world’s so serious, honestly.  And so bent out of shape, I hardly recognize it.  Where did its soul go?”

I patted the bed to coax him over.  “I think I know what it is.”

Lupin tilted his head and obliged, sliding off my lap; he sat primly beside me in his half of a schoolgirl outfit as I started taking off my shoes.  “You exist to screw up the system.  But right now, there’s nothing that doing that will help.  Your deeds are bright because they uncover darkness where the sun shines.  But right now, there’s no sun.  Everything’s corrupted; there’s no assumption of goodness to which you can return the world once your work is done. 

“All you can do right now is get shot or spread insecurity.  You’ve got plenty of money and you’re not trying to attract a mate anymore—I assume—so all you have left is your own sense of meaning.  And without work and family and your long term friends, you lack that."

Lupin frowned.  “You make it sound like I’m having a midlife crisis.”

Now done with my shoes, I pulled Lupin’s feet over to my lap.  “Maybe you are.” 

I looked him up and down pointedly, and he innocently followed suit. 

Lupin frowned, thinking, then shook his head gently. He leaned back on the bed, arms up behind his head.  The sheets swept up around him with a whump as he fell back.  “I dunno.  The world is in such flux right now.  I feel like I’m just shouting into the haze of neon lights, fighting for everyone’s attention.  And I’m not supposed to be the type that has to fight for attention, y’know?”

“Thinking about one’s potency and legacy is part of a midlife crisis.  But yeah—you like to make a point, and nobody’s listening right now.  There’s no point in jumping into the fray; you’ll just go crazy alongside the rest of the world.  And you know that, so I’m glad you’ve pulled back a bit.  I mean…minus the Dust, obviously.”

Lupin sighed.  I followed that noise to gaze at his face.  He was staring at the ceiling, looking morose.  “I like to help people,” he admitted after a while, from under his forearm.  “But no one needs my brand of help, lately.  Am I obsolete, Jigen?”

Knowing Lupin, it was pretty clear that even having that thought was just depression talking, but I still rubbed his legs reassuringly.  “Maybe this is when you flip and work for some government somewhere, huh?”

A cool eye ticked down at me.  “Very funny,” he muttered, though his mouth did tick into a small smile, at least.

“Hey, it’s not all bad.  Comes with honest pay, good benefits, and plenty of bad guys to root out if you go high enough.”

“Eh.  I can’t work for anyone but myself.”

Lupin turned his head to the side, his hand coming to rest past his head, in the seat of white sheets.  Some of the wig fibers stuck to the pillowcase; it was all very dramatic looking—as much as it was annoying to be talking to a brick wall.

“I think I’m worried that I’m becoming irrelevant,” he said after a while of listlessly staring at nothing.

A legacy was a hard burden to bear.  I knew that, but maybe it was starting to rest heavy on Lupin’s shoulders, given that he had no scions, no disciples, and currently only cops’ lips to speak his name.

“You’re relevant to me,” I said, leaning in.  “And you always will be.”

His sad eyes turned desperate as they looked at me; he seemed almost stricken.

That…took me aback, for a second.  But I was determined to push through with a smile: “C’mon, let’s get dinner.” I wiggled his foot by the toes and stood up.  “I’m starving.”

Lupin took back his legs but shook his head.  He turned to lay on his side, curling up like a cooked shrimp.  Sympathetic, I came over and stroked his hair gently, repeatedly, from where I stood at the edge of the bed.  He blinked once, looking tired, and then closed his eyes with a sigh.

“Hey,” I said, to catch his attention.  “Look at me.”

He was currently staring at my belt line; I cupped his cheek and drew his face up.  He gazed at me longingly, sufferingly, then looked away.  He pulled out of my hand, looking almost guiltily about it.

“What’s got you so upset?” I pressed at a whisper.

I could assume all I wanted, but with Lupin, it’d invariably be inadequate.  His heart just didn’t work like mine did.

But my boss simply shook his head and rolled away from me, hugging his bare shoulders.

If it was this bad…

How long had he been fighting this?  Whatever “this”… _was_.

“Hey,” I said, chasing after him.  I set a hand on his shoulder, which was covered with a frightening amount of bruises.  He was cold to the touch; he shivered but then, the longer I held him, slowly relaxed where my warmth flowed into him.  “You can invite me over for your good days too, you know.  You don’t have to wait for the bad ones.”

Lupin’s moods were strange.  I could never understand how he could be simultaneously so arrogant and self-debasing.  But here we were, more than a decade in, going through the same old things.  I could see the self-hate in the lines on his face, the tension in his limbs.

Something must really have set him back; I hadn’t seen him like this in many years.

It made that anxious knot in my stomach tighten, that knot that had been present through the quiet, smiling lies of my friends that had turned into so many caskets these last three or four years.  And I knew that Lupin, generally so cheerful as to be obnoxious, got as silent and locked up as the safes he loved to crack when something was bothering him.

This wasn’t just loss.  This wasn’t just some crisis of faith.  It was something else, something bigger.  Nothing short of upending his entire life would do this to him.

And since it seemed he didn’t want to talk about it yet, I turned his head with my hand and kissed him.

“I’m not hungry,” he protested.

I pursed my lips.  _I_ , for one, was seriously hungry; I hadn’t eaten since lunch.  But at the same time, I was concerned about how much of Lupin’s complaint was the drugs.

So, mildly frustrated, I leaned over the man with a cathartic yet playful growl, my hands raking up his thighs and then fisting in the waistband of his skirt.  I took a breath; rested my head on his stomach, the rest of me on his legs.

In return, he set a kindly hand on my hair, stroking along the smooth black strands.

“Go,” he croaked.  “Have fun, scope out the place.  Eat at the bar.  I’ll be here, safe and sound, if that’s what you’re worried about.  I’ll still have all my kisses left for you, when you come back.”

I smirked a bit at that, but his voice was still lethargic.  His heartbeat, as offered through the abdominal artery, was heavy against my cheek.

And so…

“Lupin.  What’s the chance that, if I leave and do just that, I’ll come back to find you with your wrists slit up to your elbows?”

In my hair, Lupin’s hand instantly stopped.  “What the fuck?”

I raised my head.  He was already looking down at me, brow furrowed and alert. 

“Tell me the truth now,” I smirked.

“None!  That was not at all what I was planning on doing, Jesus?!...”

I sat up—but only to brace myself on either side of his thin legs.  It was good to see him energetic; I’m glad I was able to do something to get his blood moving.  “Then what were you planning on doing?”

“…Shave my legs?  Jee _zus_ , Jigen, what the hell’s wrong with that imagination of yours?”

“It’s been looking at you and the fucking miserable signals you’ve been giving off?”

Lupin puffed out his cheeks.  When I started swearing, he knew it was time to shut up and listen.

I wasn’t as into storming out to make a point as I used to be, but hell, I wanted to.  I knew, however, that that always had the opposite effect that I wanted it to on him.  So we just stared at each other. 

Finally, Lupin looked sober and awake, and I wasn’t about to let that go.

My partner took an annoyed breath and stated anew, “I am shaving my legs.  Look at this stubbly mess.”

He tilted his head back with a moody complaint of a groan that was more fit to a teenager than a thirty-five-year-old man and motioned at his legs.  I kissed his stomach and rubbed his bare calf, vigorously.  “Mmn hm.  But seriously.”  I gave him a smoky look from where I lay.  “Percentage?”

Lupin’s eyebrows twitched, and then he threw his nose in the air.  “One percent.  Just because you implanted the idea in my fucking head, you psychopath.”

“All right, all right,” I slapped his leg, then used it as a fulcrum point as I pushed myself upright.  When I got to my feet, I fixed up my shirt, but when I looked back, I found Lupin pouting at the windows, refusing to look at me.

I wouldn’t have minded giving him a show of unbuttoning that shirt of mine, if he’d been looking.  It was the kind of angle—looking down on him splayed out on a bed—that inspired such an instinct.  But seeing him moody again just made me annoyed.

So I did what I knew worked in those situations, and leaned over him, bracing one palm to either side of his head.  Lupin glanced at me once, quickly and dubiously, then turned his head away to make a point.

I rumbled at him, set a hand flat on his bare stomach.  Let him feel my warmth, feel my claim on his skin, and when his breathing evened out to match mine, I slid that hand heavily down between his legs, over the thick fabric.  Lupin hissed, the fine features of his profile crinkling up.

“Looked at me,” I whispered from a few inches above him in a commanding tone, my hair coming down around his face to block out the rest of the world.

When Lupin looked over, I closed that last few inches between us and kissed him—long and slowly, as my one hand massaged his cock and the other held down his shoulder.  Lupin wheedled breathily into my mouth, his legs jerking open for me and his hands coming up to grip my arms.  _Finally_ , after several long strokes and kisses pushing him downward, Lupin was fully accepting my designs upon him.

When I pulled away to grab a breath, I dragged my hand up his stomach as I stood up straight, never taking my eyes off his.  He was gazing at me with smoky, delirious look, his dark eyes a little less tormented.

“There’s more where that came from, if you’re still sober when I get back.”

I thought he might get mad for a second, but under his narrowed eyes, he smirked.  “All right,” Lupin agreed, tilting his head back.  He kicked his feet out and crossed his legs, hand on his knee so that I couldn’t easily get to him any longer. Then, to top it off, he put his pointer finger in between his teeth and bit down lightly, never once taking his eyes off me.  “You do that, Jigen-chan.”

He wiggled his eyebrows.

“You’re such a bratty sub,” I teased, playfully smacking the back of my hand against his knee.

He shrugged coyly, his knees wavering a bit, not unlike a flag in the wind.  “Punish me, if you want.”

“Nah.  I think tonight…I’ll just love you.” 

I swirled a fingertip over the protrusion of bone at the bottom of his knee and then slid my full palm down his leg kindly, possessively.   By the time I got to his ankle, pulled it up and kissed it, the look he was giving me was a complicated one.  His brows were pinched together and his mouth was pulled into a conflicted line, but the look in his eyes was a…sort of happy one, somehow.

“You sure you don’t want to come?” I asked again softly, sitting down next to his foot as I put it down.

We looked at each other for a long while, just staring into each other’s eyes, each trying to puzzle the other one out—and not really getting anywhere, because we were both trying to read each other’s read of the other.

“Lupin?” I insisted after a moment.

“What?  Ah, um.  No.  I’m really not hungry.  I ate around five.  Sorry for not waiting for you.”

That had been, by rights, a couple hours ago—enough to at least come out for desert or a drink.  The way he looked off at the windows, his head resting on his hand, made me think there was something else there he wasn’t saying.  Like maybe he hadn’t been able to keep any of it down, or something.

I frowned, but let it pass.  He sounded truthful at least, so I wasn’t going to push it for now.  “It’s fine.  You want me to bring you anything?” I added, swirling my fingers around his ankle idly.

He giggled at that, involuntarily curling his toes, but he shook his head in the end.  “Maybe just one of those tiny cake things?”

“Coffee, strawberry, or orange?”

“Coffee, always.  You know me.  Fuck fruit when you could have caffeine.”

I chuckled, rubbing my hand across my mouth.  Lupin was more of a, _Put them all together; chocolate, coffee, fruit, that’s living the bourgeoise dream_ , kind of buffet person, but maybe he’d finally learned some restraint.  “All right, then.”

Just as I was about to get up and get my shoes, I stared at the door for a bit, suddenly taken by the shadows draped around it—and the tension the thought of going through it made in my shoulders.  I was still concerned about him, but really…if he was going to put me through something, it was going to happen whether I went to dinner or not; he’d find some other time to do it.  And I didn’t think we were quite there yet.  He wouldn’t do that to me…would he?

I looked back down at Lupin, the light of the sole lamp in the room encompassing us and not much more in its amber halo.

Lupin gazed over my face, then smiled sadly.  “Don’t worry Jigen.  I’m really not going anywhere.  I’ll be here, safe and sound, until you get back.  Please go eat something.  For both of us.”

He wasn’t saying _You have no reason to worry, what the hell_. 

 _“For both of us.”_ …The somber words rang through the back of my mind, and seeded a very bad feeling in my gut.

But I needed to trust him.  Trust him like I always did.  If only for a few minutes.

So I just smiled sadly back at him and then put one last set of kisses on his knees.  Took in his scent with my hands on his hips, then raked my fingertips up his skin heavily, just so he’d know I was there… And for my part, just so that I’d feel him deeply enough to remember, in case something happened when I was gone.

He pulled my hat off the tableside lampshade and handed it to me. 

I wanted to say, _I love you, you know_ , but from the way our hands touched, it was clear that he already knew.

 

As I shut the door behind me, I rested my back against the wood and sighed a ragged sigh.  I had no idea if I was going to win the night—or if I even wanted to.  This was honestly nerve wracking.

My poor, high maintenance humming bird, run out of his usual nectar, starting to dip into poisoned sugar….

I pulled the hat down over my eyes and, with a shake of my head, pushed off the wall.  I’d try to be quick about my absence.

_But what is he running away from, that he’s seeking out these poisoned flowers in the first place?_


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like the idea of Jigen with tattoos. It's more LA than NY style, but humor me just this once.
> 
> And nah, I don't know what to make of this chapter, either.

* * *

[Lupin]

 

Nylon.  Unrolling up a well-toned calf, at the tips of slender fingers. 

It was a time-honored tradition, one I was not about to get in the way of.

Nylon, guided up a shaved-smooth thigh to a clip hanging off a garter belt.  The rest of the four, jangling and tapping against bare skin.

When they were all clipped up, I looked at my backside in the bathroom mirror, and couldn’t help but whistle.   Tensed a glut, and slid a hand down the curve after a quick slap. 

_Damn I’m fine._

And then, I reached over to the part still left on the sink—the panties.

“Bad, bad girl,” I whispered to my new self, biting down on my lower lip as I pulled the undergarments up over the top of the ribbons, pulling the plaid skirt out of the way as I did so.

Smiling, I took a deep breath, running my hands up over my neck and through the wig hair into the sky.  That breath felt good; it felt _cold_ and _real_ and _alive,_ deep into my lungs and spreading into the rest of me.  I pushed up onto my toes, stretching out my arms as I went into the hotel room proper.

_Seeing Jigen always cheers me up._

The sound of the sea filtered in through the balcony door as I flopped down onto the bed.  That calming sound, the same no matter where in time and history you were….

_If I’d been born into another time, would I still be a thief?  Would we still have found each other?..._

The waves, crashing along in the darkness, endlessly.  I could feel the emotional fizz in my blood finally calm down somewhat, feel close to normal again from the mundane tasks and repetitive sounds to focus on.

Toes pointed.  Stockings straight.  The feel, the sound, of being constrained in something so delicate.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, one that finally felt clear as I spread my arms and legs out, star-fish-like.  There, listening to the waves, my mind’s eye started to draw me a picture. Of the warm wind and the sky that had birthed it, on a certain sunny day long, long ago.

A particularly vivid hue of blue and its floating white castles in the sky, ever building and moving across the horizon.  The wind through my hair on that summer’s day, the first time I’d ever managed to climb to the top of the highest residential building in old Paris, via nothing but bricks, gutters, wires, and balconies.

I could see the world from there.  Each building with its bright roof housing numerous lives and their intrigues; hearing the wing of birds and the traffic from the streets—each thing was special that day, that hour, that moment, in a way they’d never been before: tinged with the success of an achievement so long fought.  As I took a breath, it felt strong and pure; filled with an awareness of what opportunities awaited me now that I had these skills, these achievements, in the palm of my hand. 

If I could conquer this, I could get into anything, in the rest of my life to come. 

This was the day, the moment, that I became a professional thief and never looked back.

That day, each part of the vista was a note marking out a triumphal symphony in my head.  Despite the view, I had closed my eyes up there with my arms out to caress the wind, wondering what songs the Muses had written on the wind for me. 

I could smell the river, but also the bakeries, when the wind shifted just right.  The sounds of people, voices calling out in joy and troubles alike.  The sound of a voice, calling to me—

On the other side of my reverie, I heard the door open.  Picking up the last bow of the outfit to knot, I went to the hallway with a welcoming smile.

But it was not Jigen standing there.

It was an older man, one normally seen in a trench coat and a zealous expression.

It was Inspector Zenigata.  He was just standing there, in a white button up and slacks, one hand in his pants pocket and one on the doorknob. 

I was so dumbfounded for a second that I just stared at him, my mouth wide open.

And then I bolted for the balcony door.

“Wait!  No!  Don’t run…”

There was genuine alarm in his voice, not the usual righteous fury.  And the way it trailed off…

It had been only taken a split-second for that thought to process; I’d only made it halfway across the bed.

So I paused, one hand still in the air, and stared over my shoulder at him expectantly.

He didn’t move.  No one was behind him, and he’d shut the door when he’d come in.  He had no weapon at his side; instead, his hand was outstretched to me, pleadingly.

“Ohhh,” I tilted my head back as the lightbulb went off.  “This is about the drugs, isn’t it?” I finally moved, slowly coming to a regular sitting position.  “You don’t want to arrest me with drugs around, huh?”

He cringed at this, forehead lines deepening.  Eventually, he rubbed the bridge of his nose.  “No, that’s not it.  I mean, yes, it _is_ about that, but no, that’s not why I’m not jumping to arrest you.”

My back straightened of its own accord.  _Jesus.  He’s going to lecture me, isn’t he?_

“How did you even find me?” I asked, forcing my heartbeat down with tremendous effort.  “I didn’t tip you off….”   

Zenigata, a little dryly, put one hand on his hip and leaned against the hallway wall with that arm; the other held out into the air.  “Believe it or not, I _do_ have cop skills.”

Still stunned and sputtering, I held out my hands for an explanation.

Zenigata nodded and folded his arms.  “Hate to say it, but while you’ve been gone, I’ve had to find something to do for a paycheck.  So I put together a list of high profile assholes with assets you were most likely to target and asked my fellows with ongoing investigations into them to keep an eye out for people like you and your crew.”

I stared at him, flabbergasted and voice tight.  “How are you not head of a department yet?”

That same sassy hand rolled on its wrist and pointed at me.  “I think you know that answer.”

He came off the wall and walked into the room.  I scurried back, but he bid me to stay, gruffly.  The Inspector meandered over to the scotch decanter by the TV and poured himself a healthy drink.

“Brought you flowers, huh?” he asked, motioning to the bouquet around the glass as he downed the entity of the drink in one go.

I eyed this, still unsure about what the hell was going on, but then nodded.  “Yeah…?”

“Nice guy.  Considering the number of tattoos he’s got.”

“Hey…”

“Okay, number of hits he’s done for you.”

I frowned and looked around the room, not quite sure if I was hallucinating or on candid camera at this point.

“Are you…drunk?” I asked.  “Am I?”

“Neither, far as I know.  Unfortunately.” 

“Shit.”

“Well,” Zenigata went on, either ignoring me or possibly agreeing with me, “the guys are out getting dinner, so I don’t have a lot of time.  But, I’ll do my best.”  He set down the glass and rubbed his mouth.  On the bed, I crossed my legs; a few feet away, he crossed his arms, leaning back against the bureau.

“Marvin Gaye died yesterday.”

I shook my head at him like he was insane.  Did I know who that was?  Oh, wait—I did.  But he wasn’t a mobster, nor was he an acquaintance of mine.

“The American singer, right?” I asked quizzically.  “Mr. ‘Love and Understanding’ himself?”

The Inspector nodded, mouth grim.  “That very one.”

“That’s too bad?” He wasn’t very old; forty-something, I thought.

“You heard of it?” Pops continued.

“…No?” I looked around again, like the missing answer might lie somewhere in an overlooked shadow.

“Well.”  The Inspector rubbed his neck.  “Public word is murder.  Domestic between his parents, he got in the way defending his mother, and his dad shot him.”

“Jesus.”

Zenigata stood up straight and, taking a heavy breath, folded his arms back into stern, professional ball-buster position.  I could see his jaw tighten even from here.  He looked straight at me, all the years of a world-weary detective written into the lines on his face and standing fast behind his shineless eyes.

“Unofficial word?  He bought a gun for his dad a few months back, and egged him into using it on him.”

I frowned at that, gears slowly turning.

“Because he was so strung out and paranoid from doing crack for so long to get through his career and this screwed up world that he wanted someone to kill him,” he explained to the question on my face.  “Reportedly, his last words were ‘I got what I wanted,’ among other things.”

I blinked several times as that settled in.  “You wouldn’t do that to Jigen, would you?” he added.  “Because people have done it to him before.”

My eyes widened, even as a chill settled over me.  “…How do you know about that?”

“Cop skills, remember?”

“Guh.”

Behind the words, my stomach was slowly dropping at the thought.  My limbs were quietly shaking, that brilliant blue sky pushed away for the stormy image of Jigen holding me and crying, vehemently cursing ever knowing me…. 

Zenigata let me have my time, but in lieu of waiting for me to speak, he came over. 

“Hey, wh-what—”

His knee came down on the bed; I slid back, running away from the dip his weight caused, but it was not an efficient mode of transport.  Quickly, he captured me, his hand gripping the back of my neck.  While it wasn’t harsh, the warning look in his eyes was.

Staring me down the whole while, he sat on the bed in _seiza_ position, his knees against mine.  He released my neck and then said, staring into my soul with all the look of a concerned father:

“Are you okay?”

Emotions flittered across my face: Fear, confusion, uncertainty, denial.

Relief, hope.

I swallowed hard and closed my hands into fists.

“I might have…”

But I couldn’t make myself say the words.  Admittedly this was more than I’d said to anyone else, but in the end it didn’t make a difference.  I just swallowed so hard and dry that it hurt.

“I’m not entirely fine,” I articulated slowly.  “But I will be.”  I put as much authority into my voice as I could, pushing my shoulders and head back.  “You don’t need to worry.  Just part of the plan.”

“Do you know how many narco cops say that before we find them with a severely beaten girlfriend?”

Once again today, I sputtered to answer the curveballs from the people in my life.  “…Uh?”

Zenigata nodded to himself, eyes closed.  Before I could figure that out, he put both hands on my shoulders and leaned forward, putting his forehead to mine.

“What…what are you doing…?” I asked dubiously, pulling away.

“Shut up and sit still,” he snapped, fingertips gripping into my skin painfully.  “Just do it too.”

I pushed back but his grip only tightened. All my muscles were screaming at me from last night, so it was not my first choice to do all the contortions necessary to get away.  And he really didn’t have his pistol with him, I noted.  So, cringing, I forced my eyes closed and touched his—elbow?  Sides?  Er…knees.

Jigen was going to be very confused if he came in and saw this.  And maybe pull a domestic on us both. But after a moment of having the Inspector’s deep breathing in my ears and nothing else, all the internal racket started subsiding.  The feel of his knees a connection point to focus on, a place to push energy into to counteract what came through his hands into my body.

Slowly, slowly.  I started to breathe like he was.  Have my heartbeat slow like his.  See that hopeful blue sky again, feeling like I was flying in it.

And it wasn’t because of who it was.  It was just that it was _someone_.  Another living being, taking the time and effort to shelter me from the world.

When I sighed, body loosened, his grip unwound.  He smiled at me, then ruffled my hair and sat back.

“There are people that care about you, you know.  Jigen first and foremost among them.  But…you ask for it, I’ll help you.  Got it?”

Slowly, still unsure I was awake, I nodded.

“And I don’t mean the ‘personal cop’ heist bullshit you pull, but actual _help_ , man to man.”

“Y-yeah, I get it…”

Zenigata looked over at the door for a second like he’d heard something, then checked his watch.  “I’d better get going,” he announced, rolling off the bed and to his feet. 

The places where he’d touched me were still warm.  I put my hand against my neck, stunned that he was going to just walk away.  Maybe I really was dreaming?

But from the foot of the bed, he stopped and turned to me.  It was a look that held remarkable clarity.

“Lupin?”

“Yeah?”

I must have looked ridiculous to him, sitting there disheveled in a schoolgirl outfit and confused about whether or not I was awake.

“You’re worth so much more than this.”

My eyebrows ticked up, all of their own accord, and my face grew red in an instant.

“You need a reminder, call me.”

I put my face behind my hands, smiling and shaking at the same time.

“Don’t make me pick your OD’d corpse up off a floor,” he continued.  “Otherwise what have we been doing this for, all these years?”

The heat finally overcame my face and started flowing out my eyes, under my hands.  I wouldn’t accept it, though.  I started laughing, hysterically.

 _That’s not what it is!_ My mind all but screamed.  _Not at all!_

But how could I even say it to his face?  _Not yet…not yet!_

I couldn’t face it, not yet.

I couldn’t look at him, couldn’t _think_.  But my mind was still screaming at me.  My body still locking up.

“My colleagues are watching your mark because of an ongoing investigation; they were damn close to saving your ass last night, though they didn’t know who you were.  And…” Here, he looked me up and down.  “You do look decent like that.  Oddly.  I hate to think about what you’re going to get up to with it.” 

He shook his head, getting the errant thoughts out, and I was forced to smile a wane, chagrined smile. 

“But…I haven’t even confirmed that you’re here, feel me?” the Inspector added, running his hand along his stubble like he was itching for a cigarette.  “So I’m going to turn off the bug to this room tonight, and you do whatever you need to do to sort yourself out.  Okay?” He turned and pointed at me.  “One night.  And…if you promise to go to rehab, I’ll let you get there without incident.”

I parted my hands to stare at him—this was the type of shit that could get him summarily canned and barred from the field forever—but by the time I came to my senses enough to speak, he’d already left and closed the door behind him.  All he’d gotten out of me was a confused nod.

A few moments after staring at the closed door, I took a shaky breath and fell back into the sheets.

“Holy shit,” I muttered at my reflection in the ceiling.  “What was in that shaving cream?”

I held up my hand above my head.  It was visibly shaking.  As I did so, I heard the hotel room door next door shut, off to the left.

I put my hand down and tried to catch my breath, but it wasn’t coming. 

Closed my eyes, and tried to imagine a blue, heavenly sky.

But all I saw were storm clouds, pouring down deserted city streets.

Outside the room, it’d started to rain.  It masked the sound of the tears nicely.

“That’s not it, Pops.  If only that was it.”


	4. Chapter 4

[Jigen]

              

Lupin was…a challenge.

In all my years with him, that, among everything, had never been in doubt.  He liked challenges and puzzles; hell, you could make the argument that he lived for them.  And in turn, he could definitely become one for the people around him.

When he was worried or angry or had any emotion other than a positive one, he bottled things up.  And when it became too much, it started spilling out of him like an overflowing cooking pot.  And if he let it go too long, eventually the whole stew would overflow its bounds, ruin the meal, and leave a huge mess to clean up.

He didn’t trust anyone with any emotion deeper than surface level, and there were reasons for that.  Pretty good reasons, really.  But I thought he’d made progress with that over the years, at least with me and Goemon, so seeing him like this…

It gnawed at me, what must have gotten him in this state.  What was so horrible that he couldn’t trust me with it?

There was a whisper in my mind, a very dark one that had been on everyone’s minds these last few years, but I didn’t want to listen to it.

Regardless, the fact was that he still trusted me a little—at least enough to be his lifeline in a crisis.  Otherwise I wouldn’t have been called here, and I wouldn’t have entertained the idea besides.  As I sat at the bar, drinking a stiff crème de menthe with dinner, I was hoping I could take that all as a compliment.

I didn’t stay long; only long enough to eat and think over my potential moves.  When I returned, I slid the suite door open with breath held.

It opened silently, to reveal a room warmly lit by a single lamp.  The space was quiet, albeit decorated with the sound of distant waves pushing against the Caribbean sand.

And just beyond the foot of the bed, sitting at the vanity desk, was Lupin. 

I half suspected he would be, well, flat on his back somehow, but more than that I expected some sort of flamboyant, ornate trick would befall me the moment I set foot inside.  So it rather startled me when, in the end, all I found was him turned away from me again, staring at the sea with his chin in his hands.

His long neck had a graceful sadness to it; his posture was warped by a delicate suffering that had long grown through it when I wasn’t around to stop it.  He seemed to be watching the ships in the darkness, glowing like massive stars toward the invisible, moonless horizon.  He hadn’t moved an inch, even though he’d no doubt heard me enter.

I shut the door quietly behind me and stepped in.  He was still dressed like a she, too, with a reddish-brown bob haircut, and if I hadn’t seen him before, I would have easily thought it was some stranger sitting in my room, waiting for me with a dangerous missive of some sort. 

Because, while she was in her full private school uniform, she was also, very clearly, wearing no shoes and some very alluring black garter straps, as her feet rested upon the chair’s cross piece, her plaid skirt hiked up a little.

Part of me instinctually understood that this could be a trap, but mostly I was just curious about how out of it he was.  Silently, I came up next to him and leaned around to the side, looking for his face.  When I saw that it was indeed him and not some dummy with a bomb attached to it, I set the little dish of cakes down and gripped his shoulder.

I rubbed his skin, then carded my fingers heavily through his hair.  Lupin closed his eyes with a sigh and leaned against my side.

“Whatcha doin’?” I asked lightly, testing the waters.

Lupin smiled dreamily.  “Pretending I’m Satine in her boudoir, living on the Seine, wondering what fine or twisted specimens will come through that door for me tonight.”

“Oh really now?” I asked, a touch of interest in my voice.  But also a note of concern, given that he was _already_ covered in bruises from such bedfellows.

“Mm hm.”

“Well, I might be able to oblige that.  But…” My hand, which was tracing up the side of his neck by the fingertips and eliciting a positive reaction for it, paused for a moment on his carotid, feeling his heartbeat.  “Satine…the main character of _Moulin Rouge_?”

“Mm,” Lupin hummed an affirmative, eyes closed, lifting his chin to sensually bare his neck to me.

               “Didn’t she die of tuberculosis?”

I tapped on Lupin’s neck to wake him up.  He shrugged and brushed my hand off.  “Don’t all classical literary figures of the 19th century worth remembering?”

There was definitely something there he wasn’t telling me, but I also knew there were other ways of getting info out of him than knee-jerk reactions to every breadcrumb. 

Lupin, for his part, didn’t move other than that.  After a second of listening to the waves and gazing down at him as he rested against me in the amber light, I returned my hand to his neck, this time settling a worn palm over his throat.  He was warm; hot even.  I drew his head back, up my abs, and he let me, giving off a readily compliant purr.

“What do you need?” I whispered, sliding the knuckles of my curled fingers up and down his jaw idly.

Lupin slowly drew himself out of his knot with me and turned to face me, deftly swirling the chair on one leg until it was turned around backwards.  He straddled it, arms over the back, and soon pulled me toward him, until I was flush against the chair too.  Lupin threaded his fingers together behind my back, resting just over the holster that held the magnum.  He tossed his head back, with its lush set of wig fiber, and then rested his chin against my abs, eyes half-lidded as he looked up at me.

“Hurt me.”

My hands had slid down over his shoulders in a caress during that display, and the words he spouted were so incongruous that it took a while for them to process.  I stared at him, but he stared back, that dark, controlling look he got when he was serious about something.

“I need you to hurt me as much as you can.”

But apparently it took me a little too long to switch gears, because he smirked and tapped his fingers on my holster.

I instantly slapped my hand down on his, forcing them still.  “No.  I’m not doing that.”

Images of women flashed through my mind, ones that’d been hurt by this very gun because they couldn’t take the ugliness of the world any longer.  Ones that I’d ended up properly comforting only after there were gaping holes in their bodies.

But for some reason, Lupin smiled weakly, pulling back a bit.  “So you _are_ worried about that.”

“About what—”

“Shhh,” Lupin said to my racing heart, holding up a hand. 

I frowned at him, unsure, but that hand ended up curling down until there was one pointer finger up—a finger that went against his lips as he thought. 

And then, apparently deciding something, he—knowing I was watching that hand intently—slowly reached out and put that same fingertip against my lips.

I closed my eyes as it gently pressed down.  

Lupin’s other hand slid out from under mine, where I held it against the leather.  It resettled on my hip bone as I sighed in relief, his thumb tucking around my belt loop.

“Why do you think I’m asking for that?” Lupin’s voice asked quietly from the other side of my eyelids. 

When my eyes fluttered open, the hand of Lupin’s that had been against my lips had come down onto my chest, uncurling over my heart.  “I don’t…” He was staring at my clothes, conflicted, and then he swallowed hard.  With some effort, he forced out, “I don’t…want to die, Jigen.” 

As my stomach dropped in dread, Lupin’s blue eyes flicked up to me intently.  “I just need you to straighten me out, like you always do.”

I sighed and shook my head, praying for relief as I gripped his head with both hands and ran my fingers through it—or as much as I could given that it was a wig, anyway.

“Sorry,” Lupin finished, and then leaned his forehead into me penitently.

I bit my lip and stared at the ceiling, then rubbed his shoulder with an unspoken sigh.  “Don’t be sorry.”

“I just want to be someone else, tonight,” he explained, bowing his head under my touch.  “Some random person you’re willing to hurt.”

“I don’t hurt random people, though,” I corrected gently, rubbing my hand up and down his exposed neck.  It was hot, and offered up easily to me.

“I know.”

“I don’t actually want to hurt you, either.”

“I know.”

“Why do you think you deserve to be hurt?”

I wasn’t asking entirely out of concern; if he wanted me to dom him, I needed to know what supposed infraction I was doing it for.  But still, if we could circumvent the whole process, it’d be easier for me.

“Look around the room.”

Lupin turned his head aside, even as it rested against me.  I vaguely felt his fingers clutch in my clothes.  But still I followed his line of sight, and that was when I saw the tray behind him, on the far side of the desk.

And the one on each bedside table.

There had to have been a tennis ball sized pile of white, if you piled them all up.

“Jesus, is that—?!”

A bolt of alarm went through me, and I instantly stared down at Lupin’s clingy form anew.  _Angrily_.

“What did I tell you about staying sober?” I swore down at him, almost ready to smack him. 

But coke didn’t make people this pleasant or lethargic.  So maybe it was an opioid of some kind?  But no, those were usually black.  So maybe a psychadelic…?

“Relax, please,” Lupin replied.  He lifted a hand, lazily waving it in the nearest tray’s general direction.  “It’s baking soda.”  He broke away from me and slid that one over, until it sat before him.  It had a razor blade on it, which was very much the real deal.  “The others are flour and a mix of salt and sugar.  Pretty good replicas, huh?”

I took a deep breath, forcing my eyes shut before I could watch him, in his incongruously cute outfit, pick up the razor in the reflection of the fancy mirror. 

It took me several seconds, but I forced the emotions to back down.  Still, my heart was racing, and the urge to grab him by the arm, wrestle him to the ground, and then proceed to shout at him was running through my blood.

“Why,” I ground out through my teeth, “Do you have all this?”

“…Because I want you to feel,” he offered slowly, “how disappointed you are in me.  And don’t hold back.”

I snapped my eyes open, but he was already staring up at me—challengingly.  My jaw, tightened to the point of hurting, relaxed forcibly as I sighed. 

“I don’t want to be disappointed in you, honey.  I want to help you.”

The endearment just sort of slipped out, but that was Lupin’s magic, I supposed: a prop or two, and suddenly being around him just got you into acting mode.

“But you are, aren’t you?  So take it out on me.”  He shrugged dryly, cattily.

As he picked up the razor, I caught his wrist.  He turned his head to me as I brought his hand over—and up to my mouth.

The white on his knuckles was, indeed, baking soda.

“I thought I said something about making love to you, tonight,” I rumbled, gazing at him pointedly over his loosely-curled knuckles.

“Mm.” A smile tweaked at one side of Lupin’s lips, barely enough to see, and then he took his hand back.  I let him.  “I want you to hurt me, Professor, as much as you can.  And if that’s all you can manage, then do that.  I just want to feel alive again.”

I blinked at this, head tiling with a frown, but Lupin went right on: “You want some?  All the naughty feels, none of the naughty consequences.”  He tipped his head back and winked at me, an eager smile on his face, then started cutting himself a line of the stuff.

I wasn’t entirely convinced that all this was enough of an answer to the questions that lingered, but…I sat down next to Lupin on the vanity’s other chair and watched as he made a second line on the other end of the little silver envelope tray.

“You do that awfully well,” I muttered, putting a hand on Lupin’s shoulder protectively.

The man glanced at my hand, his bob swaying, then considered my face—but he only shrugged, and, in the end, went back to what he was doing.  “It’s not like it’s hard.”

I was quiet for a bit after that, watching his limber wrists work, his deft fingers get coated in white because of how incredibly big the pile was.  Lupin went on, “Our mark is an absolutely cocaine fiend.  I’m pretending to be a sugar baby who’s shopping for a new dom because I’m your toy of the week and you like to pass me around a little too much.  You’re my grad school professor, by the way.”

“I’m your what?” I asked, confused as to why he’d pick that.  “And why am I doing that?  Is this plan gonna get this guy to wanna shoot me in some fit of white-knight heroism?”

“Not at all; he’s not that good—or brave—of a guy.  I’m just gonna pretend I sampled your stash a little too often and now you’ve gotta sample me out as a punishment, if you get my drift.”

Lupin smiled thinly at me.  I did not return the favor.

“You got yourself drugged up just for _cover_?”

Lupin paused his work and glanced at my hand, tightening on his shoulder, then at me.  It was a momentary look, one that stated I was annoyingly naïve.  “If you want to think that, sure.”

“Lupin…” I growled.

“Anyway,” he went on, setting the razor aside, “we’re just stealing a key card while he’s not looking and making a copy while he’s sleeping off his high.  Oh, and he knows I’m a guy.  This is just a getup he asked for, since Sunday’s the schoolgirl theme day.”

I shook that image out of my head, then asked, “But it’s not the actual stuff, right?”

“Right.”  He sighed and ran both hands over his thighs a couple times, bent forward as he looked in the mirror.  Then, he took a deep breath to reset his posture and looked over at me, hands smacking his legs definitively.

“Then how…?”

Lupin held up a finger.  “Ah hah!  That’s where you come in and get him with this.”

He opened the drawer by my knees.  A couple of syringes were in it.  My eyes widened, as that little tingle of dread went through me again at simply seeing the paraphernalia of hard drugs and him within five feet of each other.  “Jesus.”

“It’s a sleeping drug, don’t worry.  But he won’t know that.  He’s gonna think it’s heroine.”

“Tell me you didn’t do that too?” I complained, holding an exasperated hand out in the air at him.

Lupin made a point of closing the drawer without answering me and then, rather than snipping at me, he simply set his hand over mine as it hovered at his eye level.  It was gentle, comforting—and non-combatant.

And then he smiled a little bit, reassuringly.

“No,” he whispered.  “I’m not that dumb.  I may be messed up right now, but that’d just be moronic.”

Lupin squeezed my hand, and then kissed my knuckles gently after he drew his hand away.  He didn’t look at me through the whole process, but when he turned away, I could see his face in the mirror just fine. 

It was sorrowful.

“Where did you get all this stuff?” I asked, as Lupin ran his hands over his legs again.  It wasn’t like him to have medical equipment; he was more the gears and software guy.

He shrugged.  “Doctors, bad cops.  Fujicakes.  Guys that I keep telling not to go into the drug trade but do anyway.  Fuckin’ pisses me off, they end up dead one way or another in a couple years after they go down that path.  I hate it.  Lose so many friends to this crap.”  He waved at the tray, then glowered at it.

“So you’re…doing it too?”

“I mean once in a while Mom, but I’m not shooting goddamned heroine into my veins or, heaven forbid, moving thousands of pounds of it around the world to ruin people’s lives?” Lupin crossed his arms and actually huffed.  He glowered at me in the mirror and kicked his foot.  “Don’t ever do that shit, Jigen.  I’d never forgive you.” 

_What, be a drug dealer?  Yeah, not a lot of worry about that._

In fact, that was part of the reason I was back here with him: the jobs that didn’t involve guarding drug shipments and their workers were getting fewer and fewer.

So I just sighed and stared at the ceiling balefully.  _I could say the same about you, you know._

“I worry about you, you know,” I said instead, tilting my head down to survey him.  He was eyeing me carefully, but quickly looked away.  As I watched him, he reached up to rub at his neck idly, which I interrupted by settling my hands on his shoulders and nuzzling into his neck, his hand.  “When you go off to Vegas or Monaco or Rio and get drunk, who knows what exotic drug habit you’re gonna come home with from the hookers?”

_That I’m going to have to deal with._

“Excuse me, I pick up higher class people than that.”

“With higher class drugs.”

Lupin pursed his lips, then sighed.  It wasn’t like I was wrong.

“You really think I’m gonna do that to you?” he demanded halfheartedly.

“I think sometimes you get a little too excited and it might happen whether you’re planning on it or not,” I admitted, peppering his neck with kisses and crossing my arms over his chest.  “And Fujiko, she hangs with a rougher crowd than you do….”

“Oh, so we’re playing the ‘blame Fujiko and Lupin’s and actual idiot’ card now?”  He pursed his lips and rolled his eyes.

“No.  Look…listen.”  I sighed, then took a moment to compose myself.  I took Lupin by the shoulders and turned him to face me.  “I love you and treasure you and want you to stick around in my life as long as humanly possible.”  At that, Lupin’s eyes widened, looking genuinely hurt for some reason, but I didn’t have the time to piece it out. 

“But if we’re being honest for a sec?” I continued.  “If you get hooked on this shit for real, I’ll leave you so fast and you’ll never see me again.  Ever.  And I’m not saying that to give you an ultimatum; you can do whatever the hell you want in your life, but I won’t be there for it.  You know how many people I’ve had to kill—how many _friends of mine_ I was _ordered_ to _kill_ —because they got hooked on fucking _coke_ and became liabilities?”

Lupin’s brow furrowed.  “Is that true…?” he whispered, horrified.

“And in the last couple years, your work’s been spiraling closer and closer to all this and why?  You’re a gem thief, what the hell?”

“Jigen…”

“I know you like living at the edge of danger, but this is the sort of thing people think they can handle but they never actually can.  I don’t know what woman convinced you to start this, but chemicals are all we are, don’t break yours forever.” I set my hands on either side of him, on the arms of the chair, and stared into his eyes.  “I like you just the way you are.”

I leaned in to kiss him, but Lupin broke it by laughing, right in my face.

I caught his chin with a growl, lightening quick, and forced him to look at me. Lupin’s eyes widened and he instantly stilled, the laugh cutting off.  “Jigen…do you?  Have a drug problem?  Am I…tempting you?”

I had had plenty of problems with alcohol in the past, and he knew that.  Or at least suspected it.  So it wasn’t as odd a question as it seemed.  But…

I sighed and hung my head.  I released Lupin’s chin in favor of hiding my own face, then, with a snort, set it on his shoulder.

…That was not _the point._

“No, I have a problem with you _acting_ like this and jerking me around.”

I could hear Lupin bite his lip.

My fingers gripped his skin—until I stood up and pulled him against myself tightly, a hand on the back of his head. 

Lupin, immobilized, waited awkwardly, while my heart beat heavily against my chest as if straining to reach him.  I hoped he could hear it.

“I’m worried about you.  It seems like everyone with a dime in their pocket’s got baggies stashed around their house, and you are no exception.”  I clutched the back of Lupin’s head.  “I know you.  You’ve got an addictive personality.  And…I don’t want to lose you.  Body or soul.”

In the mirror, all I could see was the tormented look on my face, and the back of Lupin’s schoolgirl-clad body.

His thin, fragile body, that I’d rescued more times than I could count, whether from bullets, bad decisions, or simply falling off roofs.

Perhaps the switch in the drug culture had just caught Lupin unawares, somewhere along the line.  The ‘70s had been fun, but also relatively harmless.  It was somewhat hard to kill yourself on psychotropics let alone get hooked on them, and we’d had fun on them once or twice.  But this new breed of stuff…it was a wicked beast taking over everything.

In the ‘70s, we could go to a Hollywood party and there’d be some drugs in the back for a person that wanted to get a little more than drunk.  But now you couldn’t have a house party in the hills and not be absolutely bathed in snow.

Truth be told, it annoyed me, and I was pretty sure Zenigata was worried about why the hell his side catch involved so many drug dealers these days.  But it wasn’t anything Lupin could control—the days of organized crime being powderless were behind us.

But Lupin and I had never really talked about it formally.  We probably should have, if all this was any indication.

But that strange plague that was going around…the one that was in all the rumors, the whisper on every lips behind closed doors; the one whose name was changing every year as groups of people rushed to study it…

Lupin had started being more quixotic than usual about the time that took the international stage, and I was afraid that all this…was how he was dealing with it, and the dark new world we were in.

That little black whisper came into the back of my mind again, that whisper that said _what if he…,_ but…

For now…

“You love me, huh?” Lupin asked, diverting my attention.

I pulled back; looked up.  Lupin smiled fondly and carded a hand through my slicked-back hair, pushing up my hat a little as he did so. 

After a moment, I smiled back: Grateful, pained.  It was all that needed to be said.

“Can I be honest with you?” Lupin asked, stroking his hand down my hair to settle onto my cheek.

I closed my eyes and took a breath, then opened them again.  “Please.”

Lupin sat up and pushed the chair back, giving a bit of space between us.  He settled his arms on the rests, his head tilted up.

Then he held out his hand at me, palm up, as if this were an explanation.

“…What?” I asked after a few moments, taking his hand and holding it.

He smiled humbly at that, quietly amused, then said, “You can’t pick a lock with shaky fingers, Jigen.”

It was so absurdly simple, so unobtrusive a retort, that I actually knee-jerk chortled.

But Lupin insisted as he took his hand back: “You know me—I weigh ten pounds soaking wet and have the metabolism of a hummingbird.  A cigarette and a cup of Italian black keeps me awake for two days and makes me shake all god damned afternoon.  It’s just stupid for me to do crack more than once a year.  Heroine turns your veins all black and ugly and is apparently the most addictive substance on earth, so that’s out.  And meth—man, fuck meth, it turns people into strung-out killers and I never want to be that.  This hard shit…it’s just not an attractive look.”

I half wanted to sob in joy at that, but Lupin went on, animatedly, “I mean, I tried weed a few times, you were there, you did it too!  And remember how paranoid I got?”

“Yeah, that was not a good strain for you.”

“Yeah!  It was awful, I almost jumped out a fucking window!  And it was _so_ embarrassing when Pops found me, I’m never going to do that again, never.”  He waved his hands, eyes at the ceiling.  “Fujiko and Goemon can have all they want, I’m out on that one, too.”

“I still think if you ate some rather than smoked it…” I chuckled, chagrined, but Lupin shook his head and quickly continued:

“Anyway….  I know they have that ‘edgy silver-bullet’ allure, but seriously, it’s no good for me and it’s not my style anyway.  I got things to do with my life, short as it may be.”

A little chill zipped through me, at that.  “Wait…what?”

He shrugged, quickly holding his hands up in the air.  “Never know what tomorrow will bring.”

I frowned.  Lupin rushed to add, “But, if fake coke and a willing skirt ain’t your turn on, I do have these.”

The man opened the drawer nearest him and fished in it briefly.  When he held up his hand to me, Lupin had two little round, white tablets between his fingers.  He quickly palmed one and broke the other in two.

“What is that?” I snapped, annoyance spiking again.

Lupin wiggled his eyebrows.  “LSD.  Want some?”

“Fuck no.”  I reached for Lupin’s wrist, but he scurried away on the chair wheels, and then quickly downed a pill before I could get to him.  Well, a pill half.

“So help me, goddammit—”

“FYI, this is medical grade,” he said as he swept up his scotch glass with a smirk and filled it with water from the decanter.  “It’s not the stuff that makes you think you can communicate with Mars through your fingernails.  It just get you all warm and touchy-feely.”

I rolled my eyes and sighed, hands on my hips.  “Then why’d you only take half a one?”

“My stupid metabolism and drug-sensitive body?  Remember that one time that asshole chloroformed me and even _he_ was saying I was messed up way longer than was normal?  Man, coulda done without _that_ bruise to the face.  The one time I wasn’t faking, too….”

Lupin rubbed his jaw, remembering it, when he all of a sudden said, “Oh…I feel it kicking in.  That was one flush of heat, wow.”  He grinned, rubbing his neck and holding down his skirt hem.

LSD didn’t work that fast.  How dumb did he think I was?  I narrowed my eyes as Lupin got up and turned to me, a wry smirk on his face.  He then did a twirl and landed by flopping down on his stomach on the bed. He supported his chin in his hands cutely, while his legs crossed at the ankles.

“So, professor, you wanna fuck your grad student?”

I blushed.  Lupin, idly, reached for my jacket while I composed myself.  “I really don’t think I should reward you for this,” I muttered, even as I let myself be drawn over to him.

“Then punish me,” Lupin whispered, rolling onto his back, his knees tented—and wide open.

Another flush of heat went through me; I looked away, but Lupin set a hand on my crotch and then skimmed his hand all the way up my body until he ended up with my tie wrapped around his hand.  He pulled me down by the silk; I ended up with my hands braced on either side of him, gazing down into his eyes.

Lupin licked his lips.  My lower half shivered at the display, despite it all.  It was awfully close to his head, and that look in his eyes…

_I love this person.  I want him to be here, for as long as I can have it…._

_So what’s one more night?_

“God, you look good like that,” Lupin muttered as I reached back and hung my hat on the chair without even looking at it.  His hands reached up like vines to thread through my hair, which was slicked back, and then, very carefully, pulled off my reading glasses. I’d been using them since I got here for the disguise, as per his request when he’d initially notified me.

Lupin folded up the spectacles and rested them against his chest, gazing up at me dreamily.  His own (wig) hair spread around his head like a painting, and his clothes were crumpled alluringly.

“You look like bad goddamned news,” Lupin breathed as I came down to kiss him, “but so goddamned _hot,_ too.”  In response, I ran my hands over the stuffed bra and then up and down his sides, stretching with a growl.  He wiggled enticingly underneath me.  “And a little academic, to be honest.”

No doubt that was how he got the idea for all this.  “Is that so?” I asked, a smile tweaking at my lips as I sat down next to him.  I took the glasses from him and set them on the chair too, then leaned back and draped over him.  “And little miss, do you know what you look like?”

“Hmmm?” he asked, smiling playfully.

I leaned over and whispered deeply in his ear, in a voice I knew he loved, “A good time.”

I set a hand on his thigh, rubbing it lewdly.

“Oh my professor, not there…~” Lupin trilled.

“Why not?  You need to learn to use it sometime.”

“Oh, but…” his voice was breathy, settling into high-pitched.

My hand moved up the skirt, finding the warmth that lay underneath.  “But what?” I purred.

Lupin’s legs twisted at the ends.  “We shouldn’t…”

“Why not?” I persisted, setting a kiss on his lips.

But Lupin didn’t return the gesture.  He was just tense; when I drew back and surveyed him, he looked halfway skittish.  Then he blinked and shook his head; apparently he’d gone blank for a second.

 _The drugs?_ I wondered, but then realized they still shouldn’t have been affecting him yet. 

 _Oh…wait.  I know what this is._   I’d seen it on women all the time, back when I still went for them.

“Don’t worry,” I replied, sliding a hand up the middle of his chest, leaning down until we were inches apart.  “I’ll wrap up.”

It worked like a charm.  Lupin smirked and relaxed, and his hands threaded up into my shoulders, my hair, again.  I enfolded him in my arms, drew him up into me, and for a while we kissed like that, his moans growing ever steadily louder and more desperate as we worked at shedding layers.

And then, when I’d gotten him on his back and neither of us had a shirt on, my hands holding his arms down by the biceps, Lupin smiled at me—sadly.

“…What is it?” I asked, stroking a hand over his hair.  “Not rough enough to please Her Majesty?”

“Heh.  No.  I just…like this view.  I’ve missed it.”

There was something sad in his eyes.  Something that told me exactly what I’d been wondering all this time:

The worry that he might soon not be here to see it.

That look and the realization behind it hit me like a physical force, but I couldn’t deal with it, not now, not when I had him so intimately beneath me like this, to the sound of the waves and our two heartbeats connected.

So with a heavy soul, I just smiled and rewarded his honesty with a kiss: on the brow, on the nose, on the lips…

“I’ve missed you too,” I prayed as he kissed me back, sweetly and tenderly.  “Too much.”

“I’m gonna be high for a while starting in a few minutes,” Lupin whispered as our lips parted.  “I’m telling you now, you have my permission to enjoy it, for all the stress I’ve put you through.”

He reached up and captured my lips tenderly, and I didn’t resist.  I did hesitate for a moment, but fairly quickly gave in.  And my hands, holding him, got a little tighter over the bruises already there.

Being mad at him wasn’t going to help. 

Loving him was. 

Holding him, until he had no choice but to admit he could feel all the love I had to give him.

And then, maybe, if I did a good enough job, he’d reward me with spoken truth.

And if not, I guess I’d…

“So whaddo you say?” Lupin asked, pulling away just enough to look me in the eye.  He smiled, hopeful.  “Will you play with me?”

…I’d figure it out tomorrow, wouldn’t I?

Not waiting for an answer, Lupin promptly licked my neck, kissed it.  I tried to pull away, but Lupin hungrily kept hold of me.  I stopped trying after a bit and sighed; it _did_ feel good.  I needed the relief. 

And it’s not like we hadn’t done this before.

I checked my watch.  The night was still young; so why not?  I’d be a pain to keep track of Lupin otherwise.  No doubt that was his plan all along, the little prick.  It would have been okay if he’d just _asked_ …

But then again…that was probably the whole point.  To rile me up for real.

_Don’t you know by now that you don’t need to trick me to get me to stick around?_

“All right, but I’m still mad at you.”

“Aww….”

“Just this once.”

“Okayyy.”

“…You bad girl.”

“That’s the spirit!” 

I rolled down to sit on the bed beside Lupin as he giggled. I quickly pulled him into my lap, sparing nothing for his comfort in doing so; flipped him onto his stomach, where he promptly yelped. Before he could get his bearings, I pulled up the skirt and raised my hand, ready to punctuate every word with a heavy, slap into his skin that was cathartic for both of us:

“Next.  Time. You. Tell! Me!  Before. You. Do. Any! More! God. Damned! Drugs!  You! Little! Whore!”

And all the while, Lupin squealed in delight.


	5. Chapter 5

[Lupin]

 

I awoke with Jigen’s arms around me, and half a dozen bruises deeper than they had been the night before.

I stared out the windows from where I lay for several long minutes, not a thought in my mind. His head was nuzzled into the back of my neck, and his breath whispered on the hairs there.

Eventually, I slid out from under his sleepy embrace and went out to the balcony, wrapping a robe around me.

It was just a little past dawn—the sky was still that wane pink and muted saffron, with water-color-like clouds inhabiting it.  There were a few birds, hovering on the currents beyond the palm trees, but there wasn’t a human soul in sight—nor even any remnants of them.

This was a private beach, and given the type of resort this was, there was no one out and about at the moment.  Not even the early morning shell seekers, staring down at their feet.

It was just me and the sea and a peach-colored dawn.

As the wind rippled through my hair, wrapping its hands around my skin and its forcing its breath into my lungs…

It was beautiful.

I closed my eyes and let it soak in: The sound of the surf.  The color of the sand.  The unknowable horizon, and the ever-changing clouds.  The breeze that spoke of a wonderful adventure ahead, if only one ventured forth to find it.

Would I really lose all this?  So soon?

I looked down at my wrist.  At the blue veins streaking through me, just beneath the skin.

Not to a gunshot or to missteps.  Not to prison nor to violence.  But to…

…a simple disease?

There weren’t supposed to be STDs that could kill you anymore.  Society was supposed to have been past all that, a hundred years ago or more.  Many more.

I forced myself to look away; I wrapped my arms around my body, against the cold.  It was sixty-five degrees, but I was still shivering.

And the only thing out there to comfort me was a merciless shore.  A beautiful, uninhabited beach, still waking up to the dawn. 

I sighed and ran my hands over my head, then back down into their original positions, grip just a little tighter this time.

One day, one of these sunrises would take hold, and I wouldn’t be here to witness it.  There would be, simply, a shore with no one standing on it.

No one to greet it, observe its beauty, or contemplate it.

No one to witness that it even existed…

My face grew hot.  I rubbed at the water in my eyes, pushed it away.  I wanted to _see._   Every last minute of this life with a clear heart, a clear head.

But as the clouds tinged pink and distant waves rolled on, I just ended up looking at my hands again.

Was there something in there, something running around my blood even now, waiting to destroy all that I was?

A wasting disease…what bad luck.  Even old Pops would cry at my funeral and call it shame.

_A shame…_

That wasn’t what I was supposed to _be_.

It wasn’t what I _wanted_ to be, either.

_But does it matter what you want, when…?_

Blue in my arm.  Red to the air.

My fingers stroked down my skin, down the rivers that ran just under the surface.

_What color is this little bastard of a disease?_

I took a breath and sighed it out, long and hard.  I’d have to get tested; there was no way around it.  Not anymore.

I’d walk into a clinic.  Grow my hair out so that I looked totally average, easy to lose in a crowd.  So easy to _forget_.  Properly masculine, so that people wouldn’t ask me that question, wouldn’t give me _that look_ for too long.

And then I’d hold this arm out.  They’d fill a little vial of red with it.

Then I’d go home and wait.  For weeks.  With nothing but their judgmental stares to hold me tight.

Just…waiting.  Wondering.  Worrying.

And then…

I’d know.

I had some hope, because I’d been with more women than men.  Had been in Europe more than the States.  Had known my partners to be more monogamous than me.  Had…  Had…

It’d still be a miracle, though.  And Jigen…?

I looked back briefly.  Still just a lump in the bed. Still just asleep.

Still not—

…Dead, because of me.

“So, what,” I muttered bitterly to myself.  “What if.”

I pulled the robe’s knot tighter and went for my pack of cigarettes.  Fumbled the lighter, but caught it.  Waited.  Silence.  Cold breeze on my knuckles. The sound of the surf.

My hands stopped shaking once the nicotine hit.  It took my legs a lot longer.  But my mind, really, never calmed down.

I turned my wrist over, staring at the lighter in my hand.  This little chunk of metal, forged from stars, pulled out of the ground, designed and molded in a factory by someone, shipped here and then bought by me with illicit dollars….  Every stage, touched by people who would still be alive tomorrow. 

A flame, that goes out whenever it’s shut away in darkness, but returns, so long as you take care of it…

A flame only big enough to light another; never enough to save a life itself from its own warmth.

I gazed at my veins.

_What if it’s positive?  I’ll…have a finite time to enjoy this world._

I stared out at the water, arm around my waist as I sucked on the stick.

It shouldn’t have been as scary as it was.  But it was, utterly, terrifying.

Yet another thing about this that just didn’t feel like _me_ , and I had no idea why I was so rattled by it.  Considering my motto heretofore had been “that I could die any day, so C’est L’vie,” it seemed hypocritical of me, and that made me angry.  And around in a circle my emotions went, until I could find something to douse them for a few hours, a few days, a few weeks. 

Suddenly, when it wasn’t my choice, everything felt…uglier.

It felt like being a child again, honestly.  The lack of the control.  The swift and disdainful judgments. The blind eyes turned away by those in power who saw it all.

And wasn’t that…the most ridiculous part of it all?

_I guess…I have to avoid being bitter.  I can’t become an ugly thing on the inside, no matter how much I may be on the outside.  I can’t become a burden…a tragedy._

_I don’t want to be remembered that way._

_So, if it’s positive, don’t panic, I guess.  Take some time.  Grieve.  Make a bucket list.  Love Jigen…_

_…and live like hell._

The floorboards creaked behind me.  I steeled myself, and took a deep breath of smoke.

_And tell Pops I’m sorry, I guess._

“Hey,” Jigen greeted sleepily.  “Good morning.”

_But if it’s negative…_

“Good morning.”  Wrapped in a towel, he put his chin on my shoulder—his favorite spot—and gazed out at the sunrise.  But my eyes were only on him.  His sweet, dark eyes, his crow’s feet.  That lovely head of hair and aquiline nose.

_…I get to spend more time with this one.  More than I deserve._

I looked down at his hands as they slid around my front and came to rest on my stomach, interlaced.  He hummed happily in my ear, warmth flooding into me like life itself.

_…Unless he’s got it, too._

I closed my eyes with a sigh and tuned into his heartbeat against my back.

“You feeling all right?” Jigen asked, slowly rocking us back and forth to a rhythm only he could hear.  “No hangovers from last night?”

He kissed my neck; I closed my eyes, letting the sway of his hips, the warmth of his blood, and the sound of the surf be the only things in my soul.

It didn’t last long, that safe space.  But it was enough for me to be brave.

“Jigen.”

“Mm?”

“I think we should get tested.”

Jigen’s swaying immediately stopped.  He went completely still, and time crawled to a halt.  It was almost as if the sunrise paused, growing a little darker behind a passing cloud.

“…That thing that’s been going around?” he asked eventually, carefully.

I nodded.  Held onto his hands with mine, and hoped he wouldn’t let go.

But he did.  Without a sound save for a dangerously tense breath, his hands broke apart and left me.  Heart heavy and warmth lost, I groaned into the sound of the ocean and hid my eyes behind my hands as Jigen walked away.  I knew what would come, now, and I dreaded it.  Had been dreading it for a year.

“Just out of curiosity,” he asked, going over to the bedside table to pick up a glass of water, “how many people have you had unprotected sex with since I last saw you?”

“About seven,” I admitted.  He grimaced and forced the drink down his throat, then ran a hand through his unkempt hair.  “Mostly women,” I continued, turning to face him, my back against the railing.  I wanted to come closer, but it didn’t feel right, given the circumstances.  “I know they were clean, so…”

“You know?” he shot me a dark look.

“As much as anyone can know,” I shrugged, helplessly.  “Aside from the mark and his bunnies the other night.  You?”

His indignation turned to annoyance, and then he sighed, heavily.  “None.  Been too busy watching people die to be intimate with anyone.”

I nodded, but somehow ended up rubbing my arms against the breeze anyway.  “I’m sorry.”

He shrugged, but glowered at the table.  “Oh, I’ve wanted to.  Almost did, a few times, out of sheer spite.”  His fingers rested on the glass’s edge, one idly tracing the rim.  “And yet, every time, somehow I thought, ‘I want to stay alive for that guy.  So I can see that idiot monkey-face smiling carefree again, however long it takes for this epidemic to pass.  Even if the damn government won’t call it that.”

I smiled, thinly.  But before I could open my mouth to thank him, Jigen picked up the glass and launched it across the room with the strength and fury of a baseball pitcher.  It exploded against the mirror, breaking it too.  A shower of sparks and glass collapsed in a massive landslide.  It was louder—far louder—than the waves.

“And yet here I find you’re still sleeping with random people even though you know it could _kill you!_ ” he yelled at me, muscles thick in his neck, his hands fisted at his sides.

But somehow, this didn’t elicit anger in me, or fear—just sorrow and guilt.  I took one last drag on the stub of a cigarette, then put it out in the nearby tray and stared at my feet.

“I’ve lost people too, you know,” I whispered.

So many of them.  I had more friends who were dead than alive, now, because of this.

Perhaps the breeze ferried the words to him, because he suddenly closed the gap between us in a few short strides and flipped me over his shoulder.

I yelped, abruptly airborne over a balcony and shouldered in the stomach besides. Before I could get my balance, I was all but slammed onto my back on the mattress.

Jigen’s hands pressed down on my biceps, so hard that they were sure to add to the stack of bruises, but what was more surprising was his face.

It was coming at me—and then it kissed me.  Hard.  A dizzied, muffled series of yelps bubbled out of me until I remembered to breathe through my nose, but even then, even with all the thrashing my arms and legs were doing, Jigen’s grip didn’t release—until he suddenly let up to rip the wig off my head.  I’d forgotten to take it off the night before.

“Ow—?!”

“I won’t let you!” Jigen shouted.  “I won’t let you hide behind this anymore!”

“Jigen, what—”

“Did you give this to me?!”

His shout echoed and rattled the room.  Ears ringing, I stared up at him, my heart crumpling into a paper ball.

“Do you…have it…?” I whispered, grief striking my heart like a bell hammer.

Jigen opened his mouth, then shut it.  This repeated several more times, his face growing ever more twisted until he simply sighed in pain and pressed his forehead into my chest.

“I don’t know,” he mourned in defeat.  “And I don’t want to know.”

His voice broke and his shoulders shook.  His left hand crawled into my hair, clutching at it weakly.

“I don’t want to know that I’m going to lose you too,” he sobbed, body going weak.

I swallowed down a lump and took a breath.  Without a word, I took in the sight of Jigen’s tortured frame one last time and then gently wrapped my arms around his head.  Luckily, he let me; in fact, he collapsed against me.  I stared at the ceiling—at the view of us in the peach sunlight as reflected in the mirror up there—as I stroked his hair soothingly.  The light had gotten a littler brighter; the cloud must have passed.

“It’ll be all right, Jigen,” I whispered.

“No, it won’t.  It _isn’t_.  Nothing about this is right anymore.”  His voice broke, heated; he shuddered and growled and then keened.  He hit the bed beside my head with a fist, but then it curled into my hair and grasped it desperately.  It stung, but I didn’t mind; and likewise, when he lost his strength and tipped over onto his side, hiding his face in my body, I let him maneuver me without a second thought.  “So many people are dead already, and they don’t even have a name for it,” he whispered back, voice tight and strained.  “What if we disappear too?  Just become two of the millions…?”

I sighed and looked out at the view.  The sunrise was well on its to losing all traces of its ethereal beauty, the long, harsh light of day ready to take its place.  “Then at least we lived at all.”

Lives were like that though, weren’t they?  Just a moment in the millions of days, that would wink out of existence before you even noticed them.

Still, I held him when he cried, no questions asked.

Because he was my beautiful sunshine.

 

Humanity, it could be said, was a beach made entirely of marbles.  It occupied a portion of the world, but only a small part, glittering and gleaming and often burning passers-by.  Forged from a violent fusion of natural and divine—sand, pigment, and lightening (our earth, genes, and heat)—each one of us was a unique and beautiful little world just sitting around, ready to be interacted with.  We were part of the beauty of the cosmos—and therefore, inherently valuable. 

Some people would collect us out of the factory and tell us we were precious, keeping us sheltered from wrongs; others would be shuffled down the line to be sold, to participate in the great standard routine of a marble’s expected lifespan.  The rest might fall off the conveyor belt and roll away, or be damaged and thrown out with the heap of similar misbegotten souls, ready to be melted down and reused.

But still we were marbles made of glass—breakable, beautiful, and able to reflect the sky. As well as inevitably worn down—or dragged away—by the waves of time.

To see the beauty of the world that birthed you—to capture the light of the sunrise, the glint of color of those marbles around you on the beach—was enough.  That was all we were here for.  And therein lay the trick to life—to enjoy your days to the fullest, no matter how many of them you got.  To not _worry_ about how many you got.

And that’s what I hated about this disease.  It took away your capacity to have joy.

Not because it limited your days, or because it physically hurt.  Cancer was similar that way, but it was _natural_ ; it was seen as a possible inevitability to someone who’d otherwise lived well.  In fact, people were almost always sad when you died of cancer, and pulled in closer beforehand, just to make sure you still had joy, even though your days were numbered. 

But this…

It was _unnatural_.  It robbed you of your plans, yes, but also _your dreams_ in a way that no other terminal illness quite did.  Because it was a shame, a judgement: When you were diagnosed with this, people looked away; and when you died…

You were swept under a rug. By a government that didn’t want to admit you existed, and a populace that didn’t want to believe there was a problem.

And because of that, it took away your ability to leave _a legacy._ And that, at the end of the day, was what took away your ability to produce joy: the knowledge that the difference you made would be erased.

For all the millions— _millions_ —of people who would eventually die of this quiet, yet somehow very loud disease, their lives, their histories, their legacies would be stained and purposefully forgotten; at best, they’d be altered. Have the inconvenient parts omitted.

And that was what was bothering me, I realized as I watched that sunrise brighten, while holding a man in my arms.

I didn’t want my memory to be altered without my permission.

 

“Jigen,” I offered, after many tears and caresses and even more minutes of silence had passed, “we need to know, though.  I do, at the very least.  If we’ve only got so much time, I want to know how to spend it.”

He was silent aside from a sniffle as he lay ragdoll against me; I licked my lips.  “There’s evidence now, the lead researchers think, that this PCP thing…activates only after a significant amount of years.  It’s been spreading around the globe since the early ‘70s, but only recently have the first cases been…popping, as it were.”  And then you got a slow death by whatever unusual and exotic disaster of a disease wanted a crack at you the most.  “We could have both have had it for years and not know it.”

Here, the dull tone that’d been in my voice all this time finally lost its hush.  I looked down at my partner’s glossy black head.  “Jigen.  I could have indirectly infected a couple thousand people by now.  So I have to know.  If that’s what my legacy on this earth is going to be.”

Jigen looked at me then, red eyes meeting mine.  It was a deadly serious look.  “That’s exactly why you _don’t_ want to know.  What good would it do?  Just stop sleeping with anyone but me, and I’ll do the same.”

I hummed kindly, stroking his back.  “Lot easier to track down people when you’re healthy than when you’re not.”

“They’ll figure it out eventually.  That’s not suffering you need.”

“Yes, but it’s my responsibility to keep it from spreading unknowingly where I can.  No one has a right to be Typhoid Mary.”

Jigen winced.  He knew I was right; he was just being recalcitrant.  It was his turn to fall apart, and while it wouldn’t last long, I didn’t want it to get too bad if I could help it.  So after a minute I took a long breath and said, “It sure would be something, wouldn’t it?  If I had spent my whole life trying to be the thief with good morals, only to accidentally kill an entire county’s worth of people with my cock.”

This got a momentary chuckle out of us both, one that quickly faded away, leaving a crater in its wake.

“Yeah,” Jigen admitted, shaking his head against my chest. 

There wasn’t much else to say, really.  Except:

“Have you been feeling sick?” he asked.

My stomach dropped out.  But against my sides, his fingers curled into the fabric of the robe, keeping me there.

“Not yet,” I admitted with a sigh.  “Though there have been days when I’ve wondered.”

“Eat more.  And sleep more regularly.  I’m always telling you that.”

“Yeah, yeah.  You?”

Jigen turned his head and I followed his gaze.  For a while, we simply watched the sea in silence, each in our own thoughts as the sun rose higher into the clouds.  Eventually, a few people came out—nudists.  It was surreal.

“Like the Garden of Eden,” he murmured against my chest.  He was lying on top of me currently, his bottom half between my legs, while his arms wrapped around my sides.  I settled my hand over his head, stroking it gently, idly.

“Jigen,” I called softly, since it appeared he wasn’t going to answer me.  “If one of us has it, and the other doesn’t…”

My partner turned and looked up at me.  And for a while, we just stared at each other, both looking more sad and distressed as time went on, despite my attempt at being supportive.

“…I don’t want that,” he offered eventually, once my face turned apologetic.

“Me either,” I admitted.  “But I’d take it over both of us.”

This time, there was no denial in my voice, and Jigen only sighed, body heavy against mine.

“I love you too, you know,” I said after a while.  “I want you to survive and tell stories about me to all the misfit kids of mine you end up adopting that I never knew about.”

Jigen scoffed.  “You live in a weird world, Lupin.” Slowly, he raised himself to sit, not looking at me as he did so.  He sat on the edge of the bed with his weight heavy on his knuckles and his back to me.  After staring at the sea for a bit, he half checked back at me, then returned to staring at the wall and its broken mirror, shoulders slumped.

“You know, I didn’t put my foot down last night, because I was thinking you might pull something like this afterward.”

I watched him carefully from the pillows, and quietly, he looked down at me.  His dark eyes cycled through emotions, from anger to hurt to tragedy, and finally landed on a vulnerable hope.  He forced a weak smile.

“What do you say?  Screw this heist, just run away from the world for a while until the Earth calms down and figures itself out?  Hit up a clinic and take some time to ourselves…. There’s so much ridiculousness to compete with in the news right now anyway.  And I’m sure Goemon would like to hear from us too.”

I smiled at him gently, then set my hand on his.  Held it there tightly, for as long as he’d let me.

“That sounds like a great idea.”

And I kept holding it, for as long as we had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you would like to know more about the HIV/AIDS Epidemic and the "gay scare/gay erasure" around the disease that was happening in the '80s (and continues to happen now), a good place to start would be the NAMES/AIDS Quilt project, at www.aidsquilt.org. 
> 
> At the beginning, Pride celebrations were often as much a way to remember lost loved ones as much as being "out and proud." There were many people who lost entire groups of friends to AIDS, and AIDS is, as one friend of mine put it, why you don't see many old gay couples--an entire generation of gay men passed away before they could get there.
> 
> Thank you for reading. It's never too late to be an ally. x


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